Rebuild of I, Rei
by The Rei-Fan
Summary: Never doubt that a small group of brave, motivated people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
1. Out of the Frying Pan

It's been more or less two years since I first published I, Rei. In that time, things have changed, my tastes have changed, my life, really, has changed.

So i'm going to revisit the story, a re-imaginging, or, Rebuild of Evangelion: I, Rei, if you will.

That said, i hope you enjoy this one as much as the first go through, it was a hell of a ride for sure.

Now, without further Ado, Chapter 1, Rebuild of I, Rei.

* * *

I'll say this much right now, I didn't remember going to sleep covered in bandages, although to be fair I didn't really remember going to sleep at all, but when I woke up I _was_ covered in bandages and I felt like I'd been dropped down an elevator shaft.

That and the gurney, the gurney wasn't something I remembered, not that I really remembered anything, so at least it's being consistent. I opened my eyes, wait, scratch that, I opened my _eye_ and looked up at the ceiling, the lights were moving past me quickly, I could see doctors around me, I was being moved.

Well, I thought that it would probably be a good idea to avoid elevator shafts in the future, just in case. Pain isn't exactly something I enjoy, I'd decided, so caution would be the order of the day.

They rolled me into an elevator. Crap. Well, at least I was inside the car instead of outside, which is, I decided, how I'd like things to be. Well, so I couldn't avoid elevator shafts, I'd at least make sure if I was in one, I'd also be inside the elevator car as well. A good idea if I've ever had one… I think, not that I remembered, but I'd liked to think so.

There was a fig leaf inside an upside down apple painted on the wall of the elevator, there were words too but my vision was too fuzzy to make it out. I hear the doctors talking as the elevator descended.

"They can't make her do this; she's in no shape for it!"

"Well, what choice do we have? The commander creeps me the hell out and I wouldn't want to get him pissed off at me, I don't think it would be conducive to my having a pulse."

"You got that right, still makes me feel like a criminal."

I lifted my head slightly to try to take in my surroundings and I must have startled them because they stopped talking, oh well.

There was a far off explosion, the elevator rocked, and images flashed before my eyes.

I was standing on the street corner, a child was in the street, there was a bus heading towards him, and he couldn't see it. I could see the hearing aids in his ears.

I ran, I ran with everything I had in my body, the bus wasn't stopping, I didn't know why, but it wasn't stopping. It would be close… far too close. The boy looked about nine, not quite muscled as he would be later in life, but he could take the hit. I slammed into him running full speed and knocked him out of the street, and then my vision tumbled, the bus hit me and I had the feeling that my head was no longer attached to my body.

I snapped back to reality, or what passed for it anyway. I was being rolled through a huge room, I thought of an airplane hanger when I saw the high ceiling and open spaces. I heard what sounded like a teenage boy arguing with somebody, he sounded upset. I didn't know why, and I was a bit curious, but at the moment I was more concerned with the fact that I had apparently been hit by a bus, decapitated, and that I'd been put back together, bandaged, and was being rolled through some kind of hanger.

So much for the elevator shaft theory, guess I'd have to avoid public transit from now on instead, no big shame; I think elevators are far more useful. I could feel my whole body though, so these people had to have some kind of really advanced med-tech, although I could have used some serious painkillers, so maybe that was a mixed blessing.

The boy was getting louder, and as I tried to sit up to get a look at him the entire building shook, and I fell as my gurney collapsed. This event ranks at number two on my list of 'Things That Hurt More Than I'd Like', number one being getting hit by the cross-town bus, which I remembered. At least I remembered something.

Almost as soon as I hit the ground I felt strong, yet not overly muscled arms grab me, and pick me up from the floor, it was the boy, he looked about fourteen, and I have to admit did have a certain attractive quality. He looked Asian, Japanese probably, brown haired, and brown eyed, he wasn't hard on the eyes, not that I was paying much attention, given that I'd just been thrown off a gurney after having previously been hit by a bus.

"T-thank you" I squeezed out between gritted teeth as he held me. Definitely preferred here to the floor.

He turned his head upwards towards whoever he'd been arguing with, and yelled, "I'll do it! I'll pilot it!"

I almost asked him what he was talking about when I noticed the giant purple hand over us, I followed the arm down into the pink fluid under the bridge we were on, then I looked to the other side, and I saw a huge face, a face with a horned helmet.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have just lost cabin pressure.

My eye opened wide in shock, I knew this machine, this creature. I knew what it was, I didn't know how, but I knew, and I knew what it could do, and I knew what it was going to do, and I knew its name.

"Evangelion..?" I said, right before the blood loss from my re-opened wounds gave me that extra little nudge and made my world go black.

x

I knew the meaning of pain.

Negative, I knew the meaning of agony, and this was that. Never underestimate the capacity for pain in the human body, because if you do Murphy will make you his bitch while showing you exactly how wrong you were.

Now, that isn't to say you can't reach a limit to your pain, a limit that when you reach it your mind shuts down and you pass out. Apparently I had no such limit, but I did have a button in my hand, and so I pressed that button.

That button became my best friend in an instant, for it gave me a shot of liquid relief in the form of morphine or some other equally lovely painkilling chemical.

I heard the door open and I turned my head to the side as my vision started to swim, it was that boy again, and then I was asleep.

x

The entire room was on fire. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, I looked out the window and I saw the sky on fire, it was the most beautiful and terrifying thing I'd ever seen in my life.

There was no heat, which was my first hint that perhaps the world wasn't actually in flames. The second would be the fact that there was a pale blue haired girl who looked remarkably familiar standing in front of me, and she was _not _burning.

She noticed me looking and smiled. That smile she smiled will stay with me until the day that I die, for nothing I had seen before had ever scared me so much. Her smile, it conveyed so much loss, so much hurt, and so much pain, and so much… other-ness, it's not even something I can fully quantify.

Her lips parted and she started to talk, "Would you believe I never knew I was going to destroy the world? I would believe he would have done it, I _know_ he would have done it for me, but in the end, it was my hand that ended everything."

I blinked and stared at the girl in front of me, talking like she was responsible for all this fire, this fake, imaginary, cold, terrifying fire. "What do you mean, you did it? Who the hell are you and why do you look so familiar?"

The girl smiled her sad smile and laughed a sad laugh, "you'll see in the mirror when you wake up. You won't see me again, so I'll tell you now, I'm sorry it had to be you, I wanted a second chance for this, and the price was my life, but your life, well, that was something I could save, if only they knew what I was planning from the start I doubt they would have let me."

Then it clicked in my head, I knew who it was I was looking at, "You're Rei Ayanami, you're not real, how are you real!" There was no way I was talking to a fictional anime character in a slowly burning world, not happening.

She smirked, "Yes, that's right, I was wondering when you'd figure that one out. And I can assure you that I _am_ real, or at least I used to be. There isn't much time left for me here, I just want you to know that you will have the power to make the difference that I couldn't"

As I was digesting this confusing and somewhat frightening information she started to fade away, I reached out and grabbed for her hand, "Wait, why me!"

A tear fell from her eye and dissolved as she finally faded away, I was alone in the room, the walls were falling in now, when I heard her voice one last time, "Because, you always believed, and I know you won't let me down…"

And then the roof caved in.

x

I woke up with a start and immediately felt my body, sure that I'd been crushed to death by that room caving in. I was quickly proven wrong, my fears unfounded, for I was in the same number of broken pieces as before my little adventure in dreamland.

Fine, I was in an anime, or at least a world that I knew about from an anime, or an alternate reality… yeah we'll go with alternate reality.

My memory wasn't what it should be, weather that is because I died under a truck, or because my mind was currently residing in a fourteen year old girl's half-human half-angel brain I didn't know, the only thing I did know that there was a lot about myself I didn't know.

The one thing I _did_ know for sure was that I was getting out of this damn hospital bed and I was doing it immediately.

I slid as gingerly as I could out from under the thin sheet covering me and put one foot to the cold tile floor, then the other. I tested my weight and stood up. And fell down.

'_So much for coming out of this looking pretty.'_ I thought as I pushed myself back up off the floor, grimacing as I felt the sting of my wounds protesting my exodus from the hospital bed.

I stumbled towards the door and caught sight of my reflection in it. _'Well, that settles it then.'_ Blue hair, one red eye, lots of bandages. No doubts anymore.

I was still wearing the skin tight suit they had me in when my gurney collapsed, so I couldn't have been out for too long. "Okay, I can do this" I said to myself as I pulled the latch on the door open and stepped out into the well lit hallway.

…and yelped as a gurney rolled completely over my foot. both wheels. Clearly this attire did not offer any foot protection.

I shot the nurse pushing the gurney a look that could have frozen lava as she continued on, oblivious. I took a deep breath as I tried again and instantly regretted it; it felt like somebody had fired rock salt into my chest. _'Okay, new to add to inventory, cracked and/or broken ribs. Magnificent.'_

"Okay, step one, ibuprofen, step _two_ get out of the hospital, let's do this" I said to myself, still more than a little creeped out about the voice I was hearing.

I walked into the hallway stumbling around like a drunken moron, likely either due to my injuries, the drugs I was pumped full of, or my massively lower center of gravity; my best guess being that I was at least a couple inches short of five feet even.

Oh the other hand, as I got used to walking down the hallway I felt like once I got used to this body, I'd be capable of some pretty impressive displays of agility, I felt light and flexible, if clumsy as all hell. I'd have to work on that.

I stepped around the corner of the hallway leading from my room, from there I ended up in a much larger hallway around the perimeter of the building, it was well lit, being that entire wall was made of windows.

Curious, I stepped closer and took a look out the window, hundreds of bodies were burning. I almost screamed, and then the bodies were gone, replaced by a beautiful landscape, pine trees and lakes, the sun shining down through a massive skylight. '_Great glorious mindfuck…'_ I thought to myself. This was for real.

Ten or so meters down the hall was a nurses' station, I hobbled over to it and found what I was looking for, pain killers. I rifled through the drawers and finally found unopened single serving packages of ibuprofen. I grabbed five and downed them without water, I was going to feel marginally better in about thirty to forty-five minutes depending on age, gender, and body mass. "Don't you just love vague medication directions" I said to myself.

I stumbled again when I continued down the hallway, my balance was improving, but clearly not all the way there yet. I heard a noise behind me and peeked around the corner I'd just come around to see three men in black suits questioning a nurse, they didn't look happy.

'_Section 2, evade them'_ the thought just popped into my mind, unbidden. I listened. At the end of the hallway I was in was, from what I could tell of the kanji over the door, was a psych ward. I started to run towards the door, wincing with each step, as breathing hurt, and the stresses of rapid locomotion only made that worse.

To be fair, it was less of a run and more of a drunken scramble, but who am I to split hairs? I reached the door and thumbed the lock open, apparently they only wanted to keep people in, not out, and ducked inside.

It was sort of an airlock type chamber; there was an empty nurse's station on one end, and another locking door opposite the one I'd entered. The door lead into the common area for the psych patients, I could see several of them wandering around, some standing on chairs miming airplane wings.

The plan took shape, I slipped around behind the nurse's station and rifled through the drawers, quickly finding what I was looking for. I pulled the bottle and syringe out and stabbed the needle into the bottle, "Hmm, 4'9"-ish, average build, probably around ninty…" I said to myself as I drew up a measured quantity of the clear liquid into the syringe. How I knew the proper dosage was beyond me, but clearly whatever I was previously had some manner of medical knowledge.

That, or I'd simply gone bat-shit insane and I was having an existential crisis. Either way, I slipped the syringe into my palm, thumbed the lock on the inner door, and slipped in. I could see the suits through the glass on the other side of the airlock, but they hadn't noticed me yet.

I picked out my mark, it was going to suck to be him, but it was going to suck even more to have to explain why I got out of bed for no reason. I broke the seal on my suit and let it go slack and start to fall off of me, then grabbed an especially out-of-it looking man and grabbed him by the shoulder.

Whatever slight grasp he had left on sanity, it was surely blasted out of him when he saw me, almost naked, holding a needle. Just as the agents opened the outer door, I threw myself backwards onto the man, stabbed the needle into my thigh, and pushed down the plunger.

Immediately I started to go dizzy, and the agents burst through the door, for all they knew this guy had kidnapped me from my room and drugged me, and was trying to have his way with me. Which was exactly what I wanted them to think.

And then I passed out.

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Read and review, or else.


	2. Into the Fire

Chapter two of Rebuild of I, Rei

I descided, finally, that i was going to write this story how i had wanted to originally, my first shot at it of course missed the mark, at least in my opinion, and i didn't do all the things i'd wanted to do, and several times it disagreed with itself, at least ,that's what i thought.

Now that the customary run-on sentence is over, i will proceed.

Remember, reviews are like author fuel, they help me realize if it's worth continuing.

* * *

"_Chief!" I heard a voice yell. I cracked my eyes open. My entire body felt like I'd been hit by a car. I felt a larger hand grab my own and haul me up, my eyes snapped open and I stood on my own._

"_You good to go?" The soldier… no, Marine, who'd lifted me up looked at me with an appraising eye._

"_Yeah" I answered, still dazed. I followed the Marine across the deck of the ship, it was listing slightly and I could hear explosions going off in the distance, "What the hell's going on?" I yelled ahead as the man ran in front of me._

_He didn't answer for a moment then said "Huh, you must have hit your head harder than I thought. Somebody just torpedo'd the ship, we're waiting for evac from the Kennedy."_

_As I was about to answer him the entire ship lurched and I fell to the deck, I saw smoke rising from the bow._

And then I woke up.

I sat up in bed and took in a deep breath. _'What the hell… was that a dream or a memory?'_

I looked cautiously around the room I was in, it was the same hospital room as before, at least, it was as near as I could tell. I was alone too, which would help keep me from having to explain my rather animated awakening.

Further inspection indicated that I was not, however, un-attended, two black suited men stood guard outside of my door, or, at least that's how many I could count through the windows. On the positive side, I was neither dead nor in jail, and I'd been given a hospital gown instead of the latex body suit I'd been wearing.

I sighed and sat up slightly in the bed, the pain was significantly less than it had been before. _"Well, guess I'll just sit here and look at the exciting scenery…" _ I said to myself in heavily accented English.

Now that was weird, my mouth felt…strange forming those sounds, like it wasn't used to doing it, "How about some Japanese…"

That certainly felt more natural, odd, it would take some getting used to. '_of course, now that I think about it, I guess I've been thinking in Japanese too, it's like that exchange student in high school said, he has a hard time using German when he's in America, but once he goes home he starts thinking in German again, and it comes naturally.'_

I hesitated for a second, _'So I can remember that, but not who I am… or, who I _was_ really. Great.'_

The door opened and one of the suits walked in, "The doctor has released you, we will escort you home… don't come like that." He hesitated when he said the last part. I blinked, and looked down to see my hospital gown was riding lower than was modest.

After he turned around and left, I pulled the garment back up and got out of bed. _"Awesome; been awake for five minutes and I'm giving out free shows."_

x

The door to 'my' apartment clicked shut, the suits had just left after escorting me home. Along the way they had told me that the man who had 'kidnapped' me had been put into isolation. _'At least they didn't kill him'_ I thought, guiltily.

I locked the door and turned back towards the rest of my home when the smell hit me. I looked around for only a moment before I realized that the source was myself, I smelled like a foot. Extended hospital stay without bathing will do that to you, I supposed.

I sighed and started to disrobe, dropping the skirt was easy enough, and the shirt was uneventful but upon getting to the bra, reaching across myself caused my ribs to shift more than they had in a while. The pain took my breath away, I nearly hit the floor before I caught myself, and, more delicately went about my task.

Finally, having put on my birthday suit successfully, I turned the shower on and waited. "So, I'm here, in Tokyo three, I have no idea what I'm going to do, and if I do any of it wrong, the world ends."

I sighed and stepped into the shower. "Aieeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

There was no hot water. There was no hot water and the cold water was like ice cubes hitting my naked skin. Gritting my teeth, I took the quickest shower I'd ever taken, possibly the quickest shower in all of human history.

If not, it was at least in the top five.

Shivering like I'd just spent the last five minutes in a meat locker, I toweled off and dressed as quickly as my injured body would allow, which was surprisingly fast in light of the tremendous cold I was trying to escape.

Under-garments, shirt, socks… and bed. I crawled under the blanket, wrapped it around myself, and slowly drifted off to sleep.

"_Chief, get up!" I heard the man scream, "we gotta get to the evac point, the forward magazine just went up, the ship's going down!"_

_I hesitated too long for him as he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me up onto his shoulders in a fireman's carry. This guy was pretty strong, or else I was very light, I couldn't decide._

_My vision drifted to my dangling left arm, the one he hadn't hauled me back up with, there was a faded patch, three chevrons and a__ caduceus__, and then i looked farther down. _'Huh, compound fracture, that should probably hurt' _I thought to myself as I watched the bone sticking through the skin half way up my forearm. My eyes kept drifting and I saw the bodies, some living, some dying, and some dead. I couldn't focus on any of them, and quite a few were in double. _'Concussion probably, explains the lack of pain reaction' _I thought with a detached clinical part of my mind._

My eye cracked open, I could see half of my pillow and the wall at the far end of the room, a lock of blue hair intruded from the left side of my vision. _'That dream again… or memory…'_

There was a cell phone on a card table set up next to my bed, I picked it up. The screen told me it was 6:15. Time to get dressed I supposed.

I crawled out of bed and shuffled across the sparsely furnished room when a mirror caught my eye. I stopped and looked at myself in it. I was short, slender, pale, and Asian. The blue hair was off-putting. "Still…" I said to myself, "I guess I could have done worse."

I was still cute, I supposed, perhaps not by purely conventional standards but my figure was, well, _good_ and everything was in pretty much the right place otherwise.

I looked at my face more closely, eyes the color of blood stared back. I sighed, "Still kind of creepy, I'll have to get used to that."

X

For the better part of an hour, I had walked down the seemingly deserted road towards school, or, at least what some unknown part of my mind insisted was the direction of school. _'So, either this body has some cognitive leftovers from the real Rei, or I really_ am_ Rei Ayanami and I'm losing my damn mind. That's comforting.'_ I thought to myself.

"_Two more kilometers up this road, and then turn right… I think._" I said aloud to nobody in particular. "_Kilometers, now I'm thinking in metric, awesome." _I observed as I approached a crosswalk.

This road was busier, cars, busses, even the odd panel van, all rushing across the road I was walking down. There were other people waiting for the light to change, none of them particularly stood out, nor looked familiar.

I zoned out while I waited with the group of people. A sea of average; average faces, average height, average weight, average hair, average clothes. And then there was me, moderately shorter than the sea of salary men and women, pale with blue hair, red eyes.

And nobody took notice. Strange world that you can live in when people who stand out don't stand out, Rei must have stood at this corner a hundred times over. My clothes were average enough though at least, I supposed; I saw several other girls wearing the same uniform near the road, waiting to cross.

The light changed, a rush of people crossed the street, I got about 10 feet closer to the curb, and then the light changed back again. "_Great."_ I muttered to myself in the accented English I'd slowly grown accustomed to.

Then I caught sight of movement, a lighter-brown haired boy wearing headphones and glasses was absent mindedly entering the road, the road that traffic was currently occupying. _'Surely he'll stop' _I thought as I started moving towards him. _"He's not going to stop"_ I said to myself as I started moving faster, pushing people out of the way.

There was a car coming, some kind of Toyota or Mazda, I couldn't really tell, and didn't really care. The driver was texting and there was no way she could see the teen currently entering the roadway. _'Some things never change'_ I noted with disgust as I pushed my way through the rest of the crowd.

Dropping my bag on the sidewalk I stepped off the curb and grabbed the boy and shoved him back onto the sidewalk. I turned to see how close the car was and immediately wished I hadn't, it had arrived.

Acting on pure instinct I jumped, straight up in the air, with everything I could muster and cleared the hood of the car. I did not, however, clear the entire car; the top of the windshield hit my feet and sent me tumbling through the air. In the moments I tumbled through the air above the car I was struck by the bitter irony of having been killed by a car, twice.

What felt like a small eternity later, but was in reality maybe a second, my shoes hit the pavement and I tumbled over on my back as a heavily built man grabbed me by the arm and hauled me both out of the street and onto my feet. _'That did _not_ just fucking happen.'_

I instantly recognized him as Section Two, his face was a mask of incredulity, and I couldn't blame him, but I had other things to worry about. I spotted the boy I'd pulled out of the road, he looked about my size and vaguely familiar.

I marched over to him, adrenaline still pumping through my veins and grabbed him by the shoulders, my fingers surely digging into his flesh in a painful way, and screamed at him, "What is wrong with you, you idiot! You could have been killed! You almost got _me_ killed by trying to save your dumb ass!"

The boy blinked and pulled his head phones off his ears, "Ayanami?"

Then it hit me, the glasses, the hair, the face, the _voice_: Kensuke Aida, in the flesh.

He kept talking, "Ayanami, are you okay?" his voice conveyed concern.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. "I just got _hit_ by a _car!_ Do you _think _I'm okay, Aida?" I hissed out through clenched teeth, my way of keeping my voice down. "You know what, never mind, just leave, go to class" I ground out as I stiffly marched back over to the agent who'd pulled me out of the road.

As soon as I got back over to the agent the pain hit me, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, my ass hurt, and my ribs hurt. _'I guess I did just get hit by a car… again… and that little outburst probably blew me cover to shit.'_ I thought to myself as I got the agent's attention, not that that would have been hard anyway, all things considered.

"We could have handled that you know" the agent mentioned to me as I walked next to him, he was leading me towards a car. "Although, I'm sure it wouldn't have been as… _impressive_ as that. You dropped this" he said as he handed me by bag.

"It felt pretty impressive" I quipped as I took the bag, climbing into the car through the door he'd opened for me, "So, school then?"

X

"…and then she yelled at me, it happened!" Aida recounted to his tracksuit clad friend as I entered the classroom, how he'd gotten there first I was at a loss for.

"Bullshit, Ayanami don't talk to nobody, especially not yellin." The taller, who I assumed was Suzuhara, answered him.

I walked past them, silently, to my desk by the window and sat, reflecting on the conversation I'd had in the car with the agent who'd pulled me out of the road.

"_Will this be in the report?" I'd asked him as he drove. The buildings passed by in silence as he considered my question, the series of one-way streets meant that we wouldn't be taking a direct course to the school after all, still, better than walking._

"_Something tells me I shouldn't do that, actually." He replied after considering it, "Besides, it's not as if anybody would believe that you, of all people, screamed at somebody for being stupid."_

"_And the driver of the car?" I asked as we turned a corner._

"_Other agent's are dealing with that. She's going to be riding the bus for a while." He answered with a slight grin._

_I smiled slightly at that, at least she wasn't going to be making that mistake again. We pulled over onto the side of the road, the school was through my window. I opened my door and started to get out when I turned back to the man. "Thank you, Agent…" I trailed off._

"_Shimata, and you're welcome Ayanami."_

I sighed, at least my little outburst hadn't cost me yet due in no small part to pure unadulterated luck, and it was all for nothing at that, as the agent had as much as told me they had the situation under control.

I was stupid, and I'd have to work on that in the future… still, it wasn't as if I could let him get run down by a car, and I didn't know that Section Two was paying attention to him anyway.

But I should have, and if I'd recognized him sooner I would have. Class 2-A, the no-mothers class, the class full of potential evangelion pilots; of course they wouldn't let him get plowed by a car, even if they didn't know how important he might have been.

"Ayanami?" I heard, dragging me out of my thoughts, I turned to see Suzuhara looking at me. "Is it true?"

I tilted my head an almost infinitesimal amount to the side, questioningly.

"What Ken said, 'bout you pullin' him out of the road, gettin' hit by a car, and then bitchin' him out?" he elaborated.

I blinked at him, twice, and then slowly turned my head back to the window, staring out into the world. The world, my world, if not before, than surely now. _'If there is where I'm going to be, I'd like to at least live to turn fifteen…again.' _ I thought with an internal laugh. Not that I knew how old I'd been, who I was, who my parents were, or anything at all really.

All I knew was that there was a possibility that I'd been in the navy at one point, and might have been a medic, but even that could have just been a dream. _'Of course, I knew the proper dosage to dope myself in the hospital.'_

I sighed as I looked at a blue car drive past the school. _'Which also begs the question; shouldn't there have been a camera or something that saw what really happened at the hospital? Had somebody covered for me, or should I expect some very difficult questions from a man in white gloves? Unless… that Agent Shimata… he seemed vaguely familiar, he may have been one of the agents looking for me in the hospital, and I'm almost positive he was one of the ones outside my door. Had he covered for me? Why would he?'_

Regardless, I'd decided, it needed more investigation. How I'd go about that, however, I didn't yet know.

* * *

some googling or knowledge of naval rank insignia will help the detectives among you figure out what that patch meant.


	3. Coffee Waffle Shotgun

Chapter 3 is here now.

Read, review, etc.

I need a proofreader, so, if anybody wants to volunteer, go for it.

* * *

"_-fornia rest in peace, simultaneous release, California show your teeth, she's my priestess, I'm your pri-" _The song was abruptly cut off when my closed fist shot out and slammed down on top of the clock-radio, silencing the alarm.

"Heh, Red Hot Chili Peppers, at least there's a small measure of sanity in the universe." I muttered to myself as I stirred from my rudely interrupted slumber. I looked at the time and frowned, four thirty, I did _not_ set my alarm this early.

I sighed, too late to go back to sleep anyway, I'd never been good at quick naps. "Well, nothing for it, guess it's time to shower up and get dressed." And so, I made the short trek to the shower, leaving a trail of garments behind me as I turned on the water taps and was pleasantly surprised to have hot water for a change. Thank god for small favors at least.

For the next fifteen minutes, I was in heaven, it was as if God himself had spoken and said "Let there be heat" and, upon having done so, I saw that it was _good_. If not for the comfort aspect, the warm water actually made the soap work properly and I got actually _clean_ for once.

When the hot water finally ran out, and long after the important part of my shower, I shut the taps off and dried myself with a clean grey towel, no personality to be sure, but it got the job done.

Lacking any other attire save a plugsuit (and having decided fetish gear does not make good 'around-the-house' wear) I put on my school uniform, and immediately felt like a child. Granted, I was technically a child at that point, it still didn't sit any better.

I looked at my phone, it was five oh five, lovely. Then, it began to vibrate, so I did the natural thing, and pressed the talk button, "Yes?"

"_Ah, Ayanami, good to see you're up, I take it the alarm I set woke you up? I'll be up in a few minutes!" _ then the line went dead.

I clicked the end button on the phone and turned to my door just as I heard a knock, I sighed and pulled the latch, opening it to find a section two agent standing there smiling, "Ayanami." He said.

"Shimata, to what do I owe the pleasure of being woken up at dark-thirty?" I asked humorlessly.

"Well, it occurred to me that unless we want to put you on twenty-four hour lockdown, there's a chance that what happened the other day could happen again; you'd get away from us or do something reckless and it might not just be a car next time." He started to explain, to my great… pleasure? No, that would be a lie.

"And…?" I prompted, flatly.

"Well" he continued, "as the head of your detail, it falls within my power to take whatever measures I deem necessary to keep you safe, so get your shoes on, we're going for breakfast, then to headquarters."

"You know, I could call you a pervert, slipping into a girl's apartment while she's sleeping" I joked with a slight smirk, "what would the others think?"

He just laughed again and held up a small flat plastic card in his hand, "Remote control, I can set your alarm from the other side of the complex with this thing."

I nodded my understanding as I stepped into my slip-ons, "Alright, well, you did say breakfast, so lead on."

As much as the guy laughed, I'd have to wonder how he ever got into section two at all… then again, being on the Ayanami detail must have been new guy work, or at least work for the guy who pissed everybody else off.

"Aye aye Chief!" he laughed with a mock salute as he turned to walk back down the hallway leading to my door.

I froze in mid step when I heard those words, and then dismissed it as coincidence and walked off after him.

If I had known, at that moment, the full implications of the words he'd spoken, it might have changed everything.

X

Breakfast was, to put it lightly, a surreal experience.

I wouldn't say that I am any kind of superior authority on Japanese culture, and at the same time I would say that I had never, and may never actually need to be. However, I can say with a great deal of certainty that the Waffle House knock-off we ate at wouldn't qualify as traditional in any sense of the word.

That's not to say it wasn't welcome, all things considered. Even so, it was probably the least Japanese I'd ever felt, ever, or, as far back as I could remember at the very least.

"So" I asked, breaking the silence that had settled over us while the other patrons of the establishment stared in curiosity and judgment at the middle aged man and teenage girl in the fork'n'bucket at five thirty in the morning.

"So?" he repeated, inquiringly, the fork half way to his mouth, waffle and syrup hovering inches away from consumption.

"So, how'd you find Gaijin Grill anyway?" I asked, using the nickname for the place that I'd come up with in that moment.

"You're calling it that?" he asked, talking around the waffle chunk that had found its final resting place.

"It's a fair enough description, considering the predominantly Caucasian staff and clientele… and you still didn't answer my question" I noted as I put my own fork down, I'd had enough waffle.

"I'd been going with 'Honkey Hotplate' myself, but Gaijin Grill works." He said, washing the remains of his waffle down with a mug of coffee, or, what passed for coffee here anyway, I was less than impressed with it.

"And?" I pressed.

"…Right, anyway, you probably don't know this, but I'm actually not from around here, my mom was American and, for a while anyway, we traveled around between America and Japan, at least when I was growing up." He paused for a moment to take another drink from his cup. His facial expression was beginning to convey that he felt the same way about the coffee that I did.

"Anyway" he continued "in the wars that followed second impact, I enlisted in the Marines, I was twenty eight at the time but they took me anyway, and well _time_ happened and I got older, so when I got out I moved out here, and I found this place after some of my old army buddies told me about it, little taste of my other home while I'm in Japan, you know? Besides, my friend Jack owns the place, so I get a discount, I don't make nearly as the pilots do you know."

I blinked, hard. He just told me his life story and all I was trying to do was make small talk, still, I guess there were stranger things that could have happened. Well, no, that is probably a lie.

"This is the part where I get all embarrassed because you've told me so much and I don't know how to respond so I end up just saying anything to break the tension" I replied, my palms already beginning to sweat.

He laughed nervously, "Ah, yeah I guess I did sort of ramble on a bit didn't I? Well, let's get going then if you're done eating."

I was done, and was never happier to leave a place.

X

"So," I asked him as we drove towards headquarters. Well, to be honest, he drove, and I rode. "why haven't you reported my… change in behavior?"

He shrugged, or, at least as much of a shrug as one would safely perform while driving, "That's not my job, and to be honest you're far less boring now, so I couldn't care less that you've changed… well that sounds kind of mean, but I think you get what I'm going for… still, if you don't want to draw attention, I'd keep who you show this side of yourself too to a minimum."

"You deleted the surveillance video at the hospital." I accused, still not sure myself, but I gambled it.

The automobile slid into the train-car and was locked down, the vehicle shifted sideways in silence as we descended.

He said nothing for a moment after that, then he turned towards me and I knew I was right. "My job is to protect you, and that is exactly what I am going to do, no matter who it is that I am protecting you from, I thought I'd made that clear by now." He said without even a hint of anger, if anything, I almost detected sadness, even regret.

Odd.

"We're here" he announced as the train came to the end of the line at headquarters.

X

"Where are we going?" I asked quietly as we walked down hallways I'd never been down before or at least any that I remembered walking down.

"You'll see." He answered as we turned down a side corridor, 'Section Two Training Facilities' it said. What exactly that entailed I didn't know but imagined that before long I would find out.

As we progressed through the section dedicated to section two operations, I noticed that the particular architecture of the corridors became less 'High Class Science Facility' and more 'Faux Military Base' if there is such a thing.

We stopped at a steel mesh door inset into the cement wall and Shimata swiped his ID on the reader by the handle, it beeped and he pulled the door handle. "After you" He said as he stepped aside to allow me past.

Taking his invitation at this point was obvious, I'd followed him this far, what's a few more meters at this point? Once inside the room I realized where we were; a firing range, the section two training firing range in fact.

"Are you for real?" I asked under my breath as he stepped up beside me.

"Of course" he replied "you pilot a multiple million kilogram robot, if you can handle that, you can handle a handgun, besides this is good practice for shooting when you're piloting"

"The computers handle most of the aiming in Eva" I protested, to no avail most likely.

"Well, what if they fail?" he said "besides, you never know when you'll need to protect yourself."

"You just want to see me make a fool of myself" I accused.

"Don't be a baby, Rei." He shot back quietly. I looked at him and saw he was offering me a pair of tinted safety glasses and ear muffs.

"Fine." I muttered as I took them and followed as he led me to a stall. By this point the few other people, all section two, had noticed me and were staring, if covertly. Awesome.

"And you'll start out with this." He said, handing me his side arm.

I took the gun and looked it over, it was a little heavy, and for some reason the design felt familiar, like I'd seen one before. Then it hit me that I knew what it was: A Colt M1911, one of the more popular side-arms in the US Military, and in fact worldwide. So, he'd kept his service pistol?

"Whenever you're ready" he said as he handed me the magazine.

I nodded wordlessly and slid the magazine into the receiver and racked the slide, it felt smooth, or at least as smooth as I had imagined it should be. Almost automatically I disengaged the safety and slid my right foot back slightly and took up a firing stance. I lined my right eye up on the sights, target down range in the center, I rolled the trigger…

And nearly dropped the gun when it went off, my wrist snapped back with the recoil, it felt like I was firing lug-nuts out of the damn thing, what kind of jackass hands a fourteen year old girl a forty-five?

He moved to take the gun but I held up my hand, I was going to try it again, now that I knew what the recoil was going to feel like. I lined up another shot, braced myself for the recoil and rolled the trigger. The gun still kicked like a mule, but the shot went down the center and the target jumped a little as the bullet hit it.

The gun cycled in the next round, and I fired again, and again, and again, until the magazine was empty. I locked the slide and set the gun down, my hand was sore as hell, but at least I did what he wanted.

I heard a whirring noise and looked to see that Shimata had started retracting the target, he was… smiling?

"So how did I do?" I asked, more than a little curious, all things considered.

"Well, you started out okay, after the first shot anyway, then you started to suck." He said with a laugh. "Really, it's too much gun for somebody your size, so the first few shots wore you out and then it went downhill from there… Still, you did pretty well, if I didn't know any better I'd almost swear you'd handled a gun like this before."

'_You have no idea'_ I thought to myself as I took off my earmuffs. "So, something smaller than your hand-cannon then?" I asked.

"Actually yeah, or something like a rifle since you can brace those… or, if you really want to get into this, I guess we could look into some of the guns the Eva's weapons are based on, but I'd probably have to get in touch with section one to find out what those might be..." He rambled.

"So… where to next?" I asked quietly. "If we're done here, I wanna go somewhere else before, you know, it gets weird or anything."

"Sure, the next place is even more fun." He answered with a grin.

X

"Oh my god" I wheezed as I hunched over, exhausted from my run around the track. "Are you a body guard or a drill instructor?" I demanded. I was about ready to collapse by this point; my hair and the borrowed track suit were sticking to me with the sweat and my muscles felt like cheap rubber.

A hand appeared in front of me holding a water bottle. "Don't complain, the exercise is good for you, get you back into top shape after your injury, you should be thanking me, you know."

I grabbed the bottle and sucked down about half of it before I handed it back, "Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted to do with my day today, you've made life worth living, Shimata, truly."

"That's my job. But you should know the day is not yet over, you still have school; you should hurry up and get a shower. It's almost seven so I'll take you to class or else you'll never make it on time." He said as he led me back towards the female locker rooms.

As I undressed in the locker room I started to feel a little better, the five mile run had taken it out of me but, to be honest, getting my heart pumping like that felt surprisingly good, I thought as I walked for the showers in my towel, today would be a good day.

At least, until I got to the showers and realized that not only were they group showers, I wasn't the only one using them. If there was any time I'd wished I had no modesty, this would have been it.

The other two women in the shower were, to put it lightly, far better put together than I, it was enough to make anybody feel inadequate, I supposed.

They looked at me for a moment, then, as if sensing how uncomfortable I was, kindly looked away as I took off my towel and stood under one of the shower heads.

The water was hot, the soap smelled good, and the shampoo was one of the better brands, and yet it would still rank up with one of the fastest shower's I'd ever taken, if I was timing it. In reality I was far more focused on trying not to feel like I was being judged or analyzed by the other occupants of the room.

As I watched the last of the soap wash off and down the drain, I shut off the water and was wrapped in a towel and out of there as fast as I could. It was long after I'd gotten dressed, and was on my way to school that I started to shake. I knew that something about what had happened had rattled me, and I'd give anything to know why.

I just hoped that when i figured it out, I could handle the reason.


	4. Dreams

Still waiting for prereaders.

Enjoy chapter four.

or don't, that works too.

* * *

'_Ikari'_

There he was, sitting at his desk, for the first time. It was the first really good look I'd gotten of him, the first non-cycloptic look anyway.

But he was in class anyway… what did that mean? It felt important, yet I couldn't remember. If I I'd known that this was going to happen I'd probably have paid more attention to the anime. Or, with my powers of foresight I wouldn't have jumped in front of that truck.

Then again, maybe I still would have, he was just a kid after all.

Suddenly, the entire class was out of their chairs and surrounding Ikari. _'He must have said yes' _ I thought to myself. On second look, not everybody was surrounding Ikari, I'd noticed. No, Suzuhara was still in his desk, still sitting, staring daggers into the smaller boy's back.

'_So, that still happened as well.'_ Still, it's not as if I could interfere, the consequences could be catastrophic; I could change things in such a way that they might never be recovered.

The class began to file out of the room while I was lost in my thoughts, Ikari slipped off away from his admirers and Suzuhara and Aida were close behind him. I followed them, I had to see it, and I had to be there, even if I wasn't sure why.

I could hear the two in front of me as I followed them down the staircase. "I just want to talk to him Ken." That sounded like Suzuhara.

"That's a lie and you know it, Touji. You're gonna tear him up" who I assumed was Aida replied.

I carefully rounded the first landing only to find the staircase vacant. I heard a door slam shut a moment later. Apparently I was nowhere near as close as I'd thought I was, their voices had simply carried pretty far. _'Of course, that would mean…'_

'_Ah crap'_ I thought as I jumped the railing to the next landing down, I landed in a roll and pushed myself back to my feet and pushed my way through the door and into the outside. Ikari was on the ground, holding his face, Suzuhara was glaring at him. I just stared; I couldn't do anything without risking changing things. Shinji said something, and Suzuhara's face flashed with anger.

"_Fuck it."_ I said to myself as I sprinted across the courtyard towards the confrontation. Suzuhara was closing on Ikari fast, but I was faster. I crashed into his back at a full sprint and executed a half-assed full nelson, pinning his arms behind him and shoving his head down into his chest.

"Pay close attention, because I'm not going to repeat it" I whispered into his ear, "This boy only piloted to save me, so if you're going to be mad at anybody for your sister, be mad at me. He is far braver than you or I could ever hope to be, and believe me when I say we would _all_ be dead right now if not for him." I sighed and relaxed my grip on him slightly, "I know why you're mad, and you have a right to be, but don't take it out on the one who saved your sister's life; wounds heal, death doesn't."

As soon as I was done talking he broke out of my grip and shoved me off of his back, furious… until he saw my face. He looked shocked, was it possible he hadn't known who I was before he saw me? Did he not know Rei's voice? I knew she was quiet, but that was just ridiculous.

Suzuhara and Aida stomped off to parts unknown while I helped Ikari back to his feet.

"T-Thank you." He said to me.

"It's not a problem…" I replied when my phone began to vibrate, I knew what that meant. "There's an Angel, we need to get to headquarters."

"Y-yes."

X

I was relegated to dead weight, standing there in central dogma, a lone stationary body in a sea of activity. A pilot without an Eva, dead weight.

This was fine, the stiffness in my neck wasn't. I listened in while Unit-01, and Ikari, were prepared to be launched. I was... apprehensive, oddly enough. It's not as if I didn't know everything would be okay, at least how I remembered it, it would be. The problem was that it was all real now.

"Evangelion is moving to catapult seven, launch in thirty seconds!" I heard a voice announce over the loudspeakers.

My jaw clenched and unclenched, it was go time. Not for me, for Ikari, and still I was nervous. "He'll be okay." I whispered to myself, to calm down. It worked, mostly.

I rolled my head to the side and twisted my neck, I was rewarded with a loud and satisfying pop, and suddenly the stiffness was gone.

A tech looked at me curiously; I reacted by returning my gaze forward towards the monitors, in time for the catapult to fire and Uni- no, Ikari rocket to the surface. It was out of my hands now, truly had never been in them, but there was no turning back for him.

The battle was met faster than I'd imagined was possible. Ikari had started firing the heavy cannon at the beast, but was knocked off his feet in moments, sent flying towards a hillside. This part I remembered quite well, the turning point.

"-and let them into the plug!" That was Misato, I only caught the tail end of it but I knew what she said. I shouldn't have let myself get distracted in thought.

I'd done it again, missed the action. Unit-01 was making a mad dash towards the Angel, it must have already been thrown down the mountain. I'd swear I'd have been able to hear Ikari's animalistic scream even without the radio, so bestial, so raw, so much rage.

I couldn't help but grin, we'd won, oh how we'd won. The knife struck the core of the Angel with the force of a small nuclear device, at least that's how it seemed. Sparks filled the air; the creature slumped over onto Unit-01.

Then it exploded. That was new; I didn't remember it happening that way at any rate. Things were changing more and more, and somewhere deep down I knew that before it was all done there was a good chance I'd lose my way. I just hoped somebody would be there to set me right.

X

"Shimata, I need to ask you a favor, I need you to promise me something." I said to him as we stood at the corner my apartment building stood at, he'd walked me home.

"Sure, what is it?" he asked me, though he looked more than a little confused.

"Today, during the fight… I don't know what it was, but I felt like I was losing myself, even just watching… I need you to promise me that if I start to lose it, you'll pull me back in." I sighed, "I know I must sound crazy right now… but the other day I just started crying, and today I was almost relishing the violence… all this stress is starting to get to me I guess." I admitted.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up, he was smiling at me, "Don't worry about anything Rei, I'm here to protect you, even if it's from yourself, so, that's one less thing for you to worry about."

I looked down at my feet, there was one more thing, one more risk I had to take, and he was the only one who I could count on. "One more thing and I won't explain anything more right now… but, Third Impact, the thing we're fighting to stop…"

I looked up at him for a second, saw his expression urging me on, and I continued, "If we kill all of the Angels, Third Impact can still happen, but it can't happen without me… So if it comes down to it, and it looks like an Impact is inevitable… I'll need you to kill me."

I felt the hand tighten, I looked up at him, there was shock written all over his face, I shouldn't have been surprised, what had I even been thinking.

"No." He said simply.

"No?" I asked him as I stepped back, his grip having released me.

"No, I won't do it, we'll find another way. Go to sleep, you've had a long day Chief." He said as he turned to walk away.

In that instant I got tunnel vision, the only thing I could see, the only thing I could hear was him, as he walked away. He paused for a second, as if wondering why he'd said it. If he only knew that I too had reacted to his words in much the same way.

As I lay in bed that night trying to sleep, the only thought on my mind, the only thing I could focus on at all, why the hell did he keep calling me that, what did it mean? It had to be just a coincidence.

X

"_Heh, did you expect it to be like this?" the marine sitting next to me asked as we descended towards the LZ. The same one from the unit I'd been attached to when the ship went down, the one who'd carried me off the ship._

"_A dry scorching airless hell? That was in the travel brochures!" I joked as the V-22 bucked on an air current. Certainly it wasn't the most comfortable way to fly, but it got the job done all the same. "But hey that's why I signed up for the military, travel the world, meet new and interesting people, shoot them, then when you get shot back I get to sew you back together, it's all great fun."_

"_I'm not worried about it, as long as they aim at me I won't get hit." He joked back._

"_Oh? Why's that?" I'd asked._

"_Well, the Afghanis use those cheap Chinese knockoff AKs, couldn't hit the broadside of a barn even if you aimed at it, and i figure the only chance I have to get shot is if they try to miss." He replied with a grin. The osprey bucked again, harder this time._

"_Turbulence?" I offered aloud to the entire cabin, I was answered by skeptical looks from the other members of the unit._

_Suddenly the deck pitched and I could feel G-forces pushing me into the bench, either we were crashing violently or the pilot was trying really hard to keep us from getting shot. The engines were screaming and I could hear explosions going off nearby, none of that made me feel any more confident. Without warning the sound of the engines stopped, and a moment later the bottom fell out, down we went._

X

I woke up in a cold sweat, I'd had another of those dreams, I still didn't know what they meant. They were so vivid, it was like I was actually there, I could almost still taste the jet fuel in the air.

I rolled over and got out of bed. It was only 2am, not early enough to be getting up… but at the same time, I doubted I was going to get back to sleep soon. I trudged my way to the fridge and propped the door open and sleepily hung from it, staring into the well-lit container of mine food.

Three cokes, a half eaten loaf of bread, and a jello cup. Clearly I was living the high class life. I sighed and grabbed a coke and the jello. "Breakfast of champions" I muttered sarcastically to myself "well, it's not Wheaties, but it'll do." I laughed softly at my own lame joke while I dug around in my kitchen drawers for a spoon. Failing to find an appropriate utensil for eating my jello, I decided to rely on alternative means of jello eating: I pried the lid off the tub and held the jello in the air, squeezing it out of the container with my hand into my open and waiting mouth.

It was like a flashback to the middle school lunchroom. I chewed the gelatinous mass and swallowed before allowing myself another chuckle at the irony of that thought. I dropped the empty container into the trashcan and cracked the coke can open with my front teeth, a habit I'd had since I was a child, the first time, and sipped on it.

At least I had coke. It's amazing how far life's little luxuries will take you in absence of the necessities, in this case a lack of real food. More awake, I finally walked back into my room and set the now half empty coke down on my bedside table and stepped into the middle of the room.

I took in a deep breath, and let it out, relaxing myself before I stretched out. As my body twisted and flexed I was rewarded with the not unpleasant sensation of my neck, back, and shoulders popping. It felt good, I loosened up and continued various stretches for another fifteen minutes before deciding to try sleeping again. Thankfully, sleep came easily.

X

"_Is everybody in one piece?" I yelled through the red emergency-lit cabin as smoke filled the air. I coughed as I pulled myself out of my crash harness. I could see sunlight through the fuselage in multiple places, we must have hit pretty hard._

"_I'm good, Richards is a little out of it… looks like the prop came through the bulkhead, pilot's toast." one of the marines at the front of the compartment called out._

"_Bucket! Get that ramp open!" I heard somebody yell, and the marine across the compartment from me started working on the manual release for the rear door to the compartment._

_One loud mechanical squeal later the ramp fell like a rock and clanged against the outer wall of the structure we were buried in. Beckett was out first, I followed behind him with my sidearm drawn, and the marine from the cruiser followed behind me._

"_So where the hell did we go down?" I asked to anybody with answers._

"_Middle of bum-fuck Afghanistan" came the reply from the man behind me._

"_Doesn't that describe the entire country Sarge?" asked Beckett as he poked a mirror around a corner._

"_You got anything over there or is it safe to get the wounded out of the wreck?" I asked Beckett._

"_It looks fi… oh fuck! Hey Sarge does a technical full of angry towel heads constitute a problem?" Asked a panicked Beckett._

"_Not at all Bucket" the sergeant replied dryly before he turned back towards the crashed osprey, "Hey does Richards have his head back on straight yet?"_

"_Yes sir!" I heard faintly from within the cabin._

"_Good, introduce our new friends to Carl Gustaf." He ordered._

_I flicked the safety off on my sidearm and waited as I heard the engine get closer. And then the truck was on us, and everything slipped into slow motion._

_I drew my gun up and fired at the driver as Richards fired his rocket at the technical. The gunner on the truck opened up. My shots hit the driver, followed by the rocket hitting the truck._

_I turned around, the sergeant, the man who'd saved me on the ship, was dead, a bullet right through his head. I stared in shock for a minute as the smoke cleared. _

_Richards and Beckett were running towards me, not him, I couldn't figure out why, and then looked down._

_I'd been hit too._

X

My eyes snapped open, another one of those dreams. I really wished I knew why I was having them. I looked over at the clock; it was six in the morning. I wasn't getting any more sleep. I absently rubbed my chest; I could almost feel the bullet.

I needed to stop having these dreams or I may never sleep again. I sighed, shower time anyway; I could worry about this later. I grabbed a glass of water on the way to the shower and was mid-drink when I finally realized something I'd noticed in my dream.

The name on the sergeant's uniform, I remembered it now, for some reason. It was Shimata. I stopped mid step and the glass fell from my hand. I stared forward slack jawed.

"_No fucking way."_


	5. Shake It Up

I wrote this while high on cold/flu medication.

this wasn't really prered that much, so if you see a flaw, let me know and i'll correct it for the benefit of future readers.

* * *

I felt like throwing up right there, part of me couldn't even imagine why he'd done this, but the other part of me knew why. That didn't make me feel any better. I doubled over and tried my best to hold down my lunch.

"Stop being a baby, Ayanami. It's just a six kilometer run, I can do better, and I'm old!" Shimata chastised me.

"Yes Drill Sergeant, Sir!" I barked out as I forced myself back upright, lunch having been retained. It was better than my jello and coke breakfast, and I was damned if I was going to lose it to some pathetic run.

"Don't be such a wise-ass, it doesn't suit you," He quipped from his golf cart as I continued my run. Halfway there, so the worst of it was over, at least that's what I'd convinced myself.

"Sir, I understand, I'll try to do better in the future, sir!" I shot back, right before my foot came down on a loose stone and I lost my footing. Forty kilos of sprinting Ayanami turned into a tangled mess of limbs skidding to a stop on a cement walkway.

X

"That is how I received these injuries, Doctor Akagi." I explained in a monotone voice as she applied a wrap to my scraped ankle. The other scrapes and bruises had already been treated while I was offering the requested explanation to her.

"I see, I have to admit, I'm a little surprised you're taking this much interest in physical training." She said to me in a tone that I couldn't read.

"Agent Shimata had requested that I train under him, so that in the event that he or other agents are unavailable, I may be able to offer a level of self protection." I explained as dryly as I could muster.

"Sound logic. Shimata you said? Well, as long as you don't end up in here every day, I see no reason this can't continue." She said, I still couldn't read her.

'_I'll either find out later, or I won't, if my acting was good enough_' I thought to myself as she stuck a needle in my arm. My mind started to get fuzzy as she depressed the plunger on the syringe. I felt the needle leave my arm and the fuzziness began to fade immediately, and yet everything still felt…subdued somehow.

It clicked at that moment: _that_ was what kept Rei so passive, so dull. It was the drugs. Being on sedatives and depressants all the time kept her from ever developing a feeling of her own. Akagi must have detected too much… _feeling_ in my words, she thought it was time for a booster shot.

'_I feel like I've been hit by a bus, somehow I get the feeling my Angel side is the only reason I've still got a pulse right now'_ I thought as I sat on the table. '_This has got to be the worst drug experience of my life.'_

Not to say that I was some kind of addict, that's not to say I hadn't, on occasion, partaken of certain herbal substances, perhaps even a fungus or two. Even so, this was a fairly unpleasant experience. I vaguely heard Akagi dismiss me from the office and I, as delicately as I could, got myself down from the table and walked out.

The entire world felt like the volume had been turned down; it was almost like being trapped inside of my own mind, even though I still had control over my body. Truly, a startling experience to say the least.

"Yeah, they've got me pulling another all-nighter, still could be worse, I could be out of a job." I heard from the nearby break room. I looked inside from the hallway to see Aoba spooning some white powder into his coffee.

"You sure you should be using so much of that?" The girl, Ibuki, asked him as he put the container the powder came from away in one of the drawers by the sink. I caught a flash of the label, it was caffeine powder.

Suddenly an idea popped into my head and a plan began to form, I just had to hurry because at the rate things were going I didn't feel like I'd really care about anything in a few minutes. Given a chance, I was going to kick Akagi's ass for this.

I stepped back around a corner as the pair of them left the room, chatting as they went. I nearly fell down when I stepped back around and into the room, the drug was grabbing hold of me and I was starting to get clumsy, this was not good.

Clearly the dosage was based on Ayanami, but she was used to it, and to be honest I just didn't have her composure, or, apparently, her force of will to keep going in spite of the medication.

I was going to rely on pharmaceuticals, they got me into this, they would get me out. I stumbled over to the drawer and yanked it open, the bottle was right in front of me, on the top of a pile of drink mix packets, like a gift from God himself.

I snapped my arm out and grabbed the canister, tearing the lid from it with my other hand and in one fluid motion shoved my nose into the opening and sucked a lungful of the powder in. the pain hit me instantly, as soon as the powder touched my nasal cavity a painful burning not unlike a thousand suns lit up my world.

"_Ah shit!_" I hissed as I dropped the container on the ground and stumbled backwards into a table while I fought to hold back a scream. Whereas the drug Akagi had pumped into me made it feel as if somebody turned the volume down on the world, the caffeine I'd snorted cranked it up to eleven, and I had no doubts that if not for my angelic constitution I'd be experiencing ventricular fibrillation at that exact moment, if I wasn't dead already.

Finally getting a hold on myself I rinsed my face off in the sink and got out of the room before the noise I was sure to have made attracted any attention. I could only hope that in fleeing the room I didn't come across anybody who knew me, because at that point the way my body was very nearly vibrating from the stimulants I'd just taken I would be hard pressed to fake passivity.

I'd only gotten about ten meters down the hallway before I felt it coming, breakfast had decided that it wasn't staying down, which wasn't that surprising considering what I'd just put my body through. Combining uppers and downers is never a good idea, and snorting a nearly lethal dose of caffeine after whatever the hell Akagi had injected me with was an even worse one, I was most certainly going to be feeling the fallout from this for days, if not weeks.

I ducked into the ladies room, knocked open the door to a stall, and loudly evacuated the contents of my stomach. Not really surprising, the sedative and the stimulants in my body were currently waging a battle over which side would win, and my nausea was but a footnote in that conflict.

I rinsed my mouth in the sink and looked at my reflection, I looked like death warmed over, my eyes were bloodshot and I had bags under them, whether from the drugs or the sleep I hadn't been getting enough of, I was unsure, however the fact that I could see myself twitching and shaking nearly uncontrollably in the mirror indicated that drugs were at least part of it.

I splashed some water on my face again and dried off with hand towels. I could already feel the headache forming, and it was sure to be a doozy. I walked back out of the bathroom and nearly ran headlong into none other than Ikari.

"A-Ayanami!" he said, shock evident in his voice, be it from nearly being run over, or the fact that I looked like a train wreck in motion. I'd guess a little of both. The twitching probably didn't help.

"Ikari" I replied as flatly as I could, which wasn't very.

"Are you okay Ayanami?" he asked me, concern evident in his voice. Always the caring one, Ikari, such a shame the world decided to shit on him like it had.

"I'm fine." I tried to brush him off; I needed to get away before anybody else noticed my current condition.

"I see, um, good luck with your activation test." He offered before he walked away. Well, no walked isn't the right word, if I had to describe it, it would have been more of a scurry: I must have scared him off.

'_Activation test? That's today? Oh hell.'_ I thought to myself. On the other hand, that explained the sedative, Akagi likely thought it was _my_ fault the first test went so horribly wrong, and didn't want a repeat. Being hopped up on enough caffeine to kill a mule was probably going to make this test very, very interesting.

X

"_Approaching absolute borderline, clear in 3, 2, 1." _I heard the voice from the control room say as I sat in the entry plug doing my very best to slow my breathing and remain calm. Even so my heart was still racing from the drugs in my system.

"_Unit-00 has successfully activated, beginning data recording." _ I heard another voice state. Activation was a strange feeling, like I had a million kilos of iron on my shoulders, and that even so it wasn't a burden. I flexed my hand and felt the Eva repeat my movement, the feeling was truly remarkable.

The alarms started going off and I nearly panicked before realizing nothing was wrong, at least, not with Unit-00. _'But if nothing is wrong with Unit-00, that must mean…'_I thought to myself.

The Angel had arrived. That meant Ikari would be launched soon, which meant… he'd be shot by the Angel. He turned out okay in the end though, so I could just sit back and wait, let it happen, we'd snipe the angel, and it would all be grand.

'_Who the fuck am I kidding, that whole series turned to shit. If the world is going to end, it's not going to end with a wimper, I'm going out screaming!'_ I thought to myself. _"Alright" _I muttered quietly in English, _"let's start shaking things up."_

"_Pilot Ayanami, you're on backup, we're moving you to the cages now." _I heard Misato's voice say through the radio. Almost the moment she was done talking, the scaffolding around my unit retracted and a lift carried me backwards towards the launch catapult. Exactly where I wanted to be.

I felt the platform lock in place through the link I had with Eva, it was almost time. I faintly heard the launch order for Unit-01, and saw the purple beast rocket through the ceiling on a launch catapult.

"_Here's the beginning to a really bad idea" _I muttered and slammed the Eva's fist backwards into the launch plate on the catapult. There was a loud crack as the catapult energized and a bunch of frantic yelling coming in on the radio, most of it asking me what the hell I was doing.

'_Me? I'm not doing anything, just hopped up on a nose full of caffeine and a syringe full of whatever the hell death-mix Akagi concocted.'_ I thought right before the G-forces slammed me down into my seat. Thank god for the plug suit, without which I'm reasonably sure that my body would have split and turned into goo were it not for the latex garment containing me.

No plan, no weapons, no training. They say no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy, so maybe it was just as well. Suddenly I was bathed in sunlight, I'd made it to the surface, and the Angel hadn't yet fired, had I made it up first?

Suddenly I was blinded by the light of the beam lancing out from the Angel, and I made my move. I ejected my power cable and launched myself clumsily from the elevator and steadily got more accustomed to the controlling the Eva. As I ran towards the angel I grabbed a car and threw it with everything I had at the beast.

I had clearly gotten its attention, as the beam started sweeping towards me. I looked for a clear path between buildings and took it, running as fast as I dared, afraid of losing my footing. "Ikari!" I yelled into the radio, "Ikari are you alright?"

"Ayanami?" he asked incredulously, but, he did ask. He was awake and in pain if his voice was any indication.

"Ikari, we cannot win, you must retreat!" I yelled as I continued to try to outrun the beam. I could feel the heat on my back as I looked out of the corner of my vision and saw the purple giant receding into the ground.

I turned towards the lift he was riding down and took off towards it, the door was still open, and it might be my only chance. I watched as the distance closed, the doors started to close, but slowly, as if they were damaged. _"Here goes nothing…" _I said to myself as I jumped head first towards the opening.

I felt the heat on my feet as 'my' head cleared the opening and just as soon it was gone. I grabbed the controls and the Eva's hands shot out into the walls and sparks started to fly; still, I needed to slow my fall before I crashed into Ikari.

"_Ayanami, shutter 15C is opening in your current descent shaft, take that path if possible."_ I heard through my radio, but I couldn't place the voice. Nor did I know which shutter 15C was, but if I had to guess I would guess that it was the one I saw opening on the side of the shaft below me.

My Eva's left hand caught the edge of the shutter and I tumbled into the shaft, fortunately feet down this time. The meters flew past as I fell, and upon hearing the sound of the low power alarm, I realized my available activation time was also flying past.

I pulled the Eva's arms away from the walls of the tunnel, and allowed myself to free fall as the timer clicked down under fifteen seconds, suddenly there was light at the end of the tunnel. The finally cleared the end of the lift tunnel and landed on the platform below in a crouch, I had eight seconds of power left, but I was stopped.

I managed to stand the Eva back up, and saw the technicians rushing towards me as the power finally failed and the plug screens went dark. It was done.

Still, it remained to be seen if I could talk my way out of this, and if I couldn't, what the consequences might be for my actions. But, more importantly than that, had I changed anything in any meaningful way?

Shinji hadn't been knocked out by the blast as he had been before; Unit-01 might not be as damaged. Of course, Unit-00 on the other hand, well after what I had just done there's no doubt it had damage, but how bad that was, I didn't know.

'_Guess I'll figure it out when they pry me out of here'_ I thought to myself, _'here's to hoping it doesn't involve forty-five caliber aspirin.'_

* * *

I feel better now, so the next chapter will be more of the previous.

unless you like this, then i can go get the flu again and dope myself up on medication again for future chapters.


	6. Before the Storm

Been a little while since i updated, figured it was about that time again.

* * *

"Stay the fuck out of someone else's Charlie Foxtrot, what's hard to understand about that?" Shimata spat as he 'escorted' me from the cages, "You think I went through all the effort to keep a bullet out of your head just to watch you throw it all away with some stunt like that?"

I shuffled my feet as I trudged alongside him, the LCL was drying in my hair and it was beginning to irritate my skin. At least I was fortunate enough that the plug suit was water tight, so none got inside to make me even more miserable.

"I couldn't leave him out there alone, knowing what was going to happen to him. We're in this together, I need to have his back. You of all people should understand" I shot back under my breath, "Semper Fi, Marine."

He sighed, must have been getting soft in his old age, "Fine, that doesn't mean you have to be so cavalier about it, once we get this mess cleaned up you'll need to operate with a plan, this Rambo shit needs to stop right here and now." He stated without room for dispute.

"What about what we discussed the other day..?" I asked him as we passed a hall junction near the locker room.

"We won't be discussing it again." He replied sharply as he opened the door for me, "Get a shower and get changed. Katsuragi wants you present for the mission briefing, she's got a plan, apparently."

I dropped the matter and nodded in defeat before entering the locker room. The room was spacious, more so than two pilots would ever need. It made me wonder if they had planned for a larger pool of pilots, or if they had just repurposed a locker room intended for something else.

Or, was it built to make people _think_ there was a future in the eva program where there would be more than three pilots? That was as valid a theory as any, I thought to myself.

I popped the seal on my suit and looked in the mirror, I still looked like hell, and I could see myself still shaking. The caffeine was still in my system it seemed. I was definitely going to be regretting this later.

I stepped out of my plugsuit and splashed some water on my face to clean off the dried LCL from my skin. When I looked at the mirror again I nearly jumped out of my skin, instead of my reflection I saw Shimata being shot again. I blinked and it was gone. "Just a hallucination…" I tried to assure myself.

It was then I noticed just how dry my mouth was, so I cupped my hands under the still running water and drank. Lukewarm tap water, not the most delicious thing a person had ever drank but not bad either, better than LCL at any rate.

I shuffled off-balance towards the shower stall and spun the knob, letting the hot water fill the chamber with steam before I stepped in. My thoughts turned back to the dream I'd had, the one where Shimata got shot.

Was he like me? Did he 'hitchhike' on someone else in this universe like I did? No, it couldn't have been that, he looked the same both in my dream and in, for lack of a better descriptor, real life. I still didn't know what I looked like or even what my name was in the dream world, but I knew for sure that, given I'd seen my own hair in my face in the dream, it wasn't blue hair, and so I wasn't Rei; so it wasn't like I was projecting people from this world into the dream.

Or maybe I was, it still didn't explain who Beckett and Richards were, considering I'd never seen them before, at least not as Rei, and I certainly wasn't creative enough to have invented two people out of thin air.

The warm water felt good, more so after having spend so much time in the entry plug. I could feel my muscles relaxing from their constant twitching and I felt like I would melt and wash down the drain at any moment.

X

"_Big John this is Lima three, Lima one is K.I.A. and our medic is bleeding out, requesting immediate evac!" I heard someone scream, it sounded like Richards. I cracked my eyes open and saw the sky filled with smoke and bullet tracers. Beckett was sitting next to me in the back of what I could only assume was a truck they had stolen from the Afghanis._

"_Richards get us off the main road, that Hind nearly got us!" Beckett yelled as he fired his rifle over the edge of the truck bed. One of the shell casings landed on my arm and I pulled away from the burn, the sudden movement got me coughing and blood came up. '_Bullet must have hit my lung'_ I thought as I looked at the blood on my hand._

"Lima three, this is Kennedy Actual, Blackhawks are inbound, good luck"_ I heard come from the radio, I looked up as Richards slung the truck around a corner and I saw the Hind hovering in front of us. I was painfully slung into the bulkhead when the truck violently turned down another alley._

"_Hold it steady!" Beckett yelled as he hefted a huge rifle up onto the tailgate of the truck and aimed back down the way we'd come. I recognized the gun as an M82A3 .50 Caliber anti-materiel rifle. He stared down the scope, holding his breath, right as the helicopter settled in over us for the kill shot. Then, as quickly as I'd ever seen, he squeezed the trigger and the canopy of the helicopter turned red._

X

My eyes cracked open, I was lying against the wall of the shower stall. I'd fallen asleep in the shower; the crash from the caffeine must have hit me faster than I'd imagined it would. The water was still hot though, so I must not have been out long.

I stood up and started to stumble as the blood rushed from my head, I grabbed onto the shower rail to steady myself. _'Blood pressure must have crashed, not surprising'_ I thought to myself as my vision cleared up.

Carefully, I walked towards the hand dryers and slammed my open palm into the activation plate, moments later my hair was drying in the hot jet of air. It wasn't a blow-dryer, but it was faster than a towel, and it's not like my hair was cut in a particularly fashionable manner anyway, so I didn't care.

Trudging back over to the lockers, I looked at my choices: school uniform, Plugsuit, and a jogging suit not unlike the one I wore during the runs Shimata so enjoyed putting me through. It was then I realized how cold it was, or rather, how cold I felt, and the decision was made.

X

"What are you…?" Shimata asked as I entered the briefing room in the jogging suit that I had chosen, with bits of Plugsuit visible around the collar and sleeves.

"Don't question it" I urged under my breath as I passed him and stood beside Ikari and before Katsuragi. She looked intrigued but didn't question my choice of attire. Truth was I was still freezing, likely as an after effect of the caffeine overdose.

"We're going to use Unit-00 and Unit-01 to shoot the angel with a long range precision sniper shot." She stated finally, informing me of what I already knew. "Due to Shinji's higher sync ratio and…other recent concerns, he will be taking the shot. Rei, you'll be defense, we've come up with a shield that should withstand the beam for a short while."

"I understand" I said passively while watching Ikari out of the corner of my eye, waiting for his own reaction.

"Yes Ma'am" He said, his voice conveying an unusual amount of bravado, I was impressed to say the least.

I kept rolling ideas around in my head, wondering how this was going to play out, if it would be the same as I remembered it, or if it was going to end entirely differently. Would we win, would we lose… would one of us die?

My mind was made up one way or another; I would do my job and protect him. It's not as if I hadn't been killed before, it might be interesting to try it a second time. _'Actually, no, it wouldn't'_ I thought, reflecting on that sentiment.

I had to stifle a snicker at the absurdity at that train of thought, fortunately it went un-noticed.

"Ayanami, do you have something to add?" Katsuragi asked.

Okay, so, I wasn't as un-noticed as I thought. "No ma'am" I answered. She cocked an eyebrow, I remained straight faced, Ikari was oblivious.

"Operations begin in two hours, get ready, we only get one shot at this." Katsuragi stated and dismissed us from the abrupt briefing.

X

My eyes burned and it felt like my neck was going to split open from the strain as I violently vomited into the toilet for the third time that day. I'd made the mistake of trying to eat; clearly my body wasn't quite ready for that after my recent adventure in drug abuse.

I started to leave the stall when the sudden rapid salivation hit me again, and for the fourth time that day I gave my best bulimia impression. I flushed the toilet and finally did make it out of the stall and to the row of sinks, where I rinsed out my mouth and splashed clean water on my face.

Looking in the mirror, I saw what a wreck I looked like; I'd apparently popped a blood vessel as there was a pool of red forming the sclera of my left eye. That was to say nothing for the bags under my eyes or the fact that both were bloodshot to an extent that I'd never before seen.

Perhaps my red irises would detract people's notice from that, but somehow I doubted I'd get away so cleanly. I heard the door click and turned to see Ibuki standing, looking somewhat confused, in the doorway.

I was probably not what she was expecting, clad only in my plugsuit and a purple windbreaker with my head buried in the sink.

"Ayanami, are you okay?" she asked, concern and discomfort in her voice in equal parts, no doubt I wasn't the easiest person to talk to before I was… well, me. Self referencing was complex for sure.

"I'm fine." I replied, dropping all pretense of attempting to 'Ayanami up' my speech. I didn't care, I didn't feel like caring, and she probably would appreciate the lack of rigidity, "Just feeling sick to my stomach."

"Oh" she said as she walked closer, and then stopped when she saw my eyes; most likely her attention was drawn by the steadily expanding red blotch on the surface of my left. "What in the world…" she trailed off as her instincts took over and she gently grabbed my head and looked into my eye, "how did you do this?"

I wanted to say something sarcastic or funny, like 'Caffeine is a hell of a drug' or 'you should see the other guy' or 'how else do you think I keep this figure?' I settled for none of the above. "It must have happened while I was…" I trailed off, gesturing to the toilet stall and hoping she'd connect the dots between a popped blood vessel and nausea.

"Huh? Oh!" she said, releasing my head and taking a step back. The awkward in the air was thick enough to cut with a knife, escape was in order.

"I should get to the cages." I stated flatly before making a rapid retreat from the restroom. As soon as my feet hit the metal plating of the hallway I kept going I couldn't chance that Maya would somehow try to get me pulled from this operation for medical reasons. I couldn't have that, because quite simply, the mission would fail without me.

Never could one say I wasn't a team player, it wasn't arrogance, it was fact. If I wasn't there to hold the shield, we would lose. It was equally as true to say if not for the guy managing power levels on the gun, we also would lose.

It occurred to me as I wandered vaguely in the direction of Unit-00 that so very many things had to go so perfectly right in order for us to win this fight. Even the slightest deviation on the part of so very many people would doom us instantly. The gun might not fire, the lamination on the shield might not hold, the targeting system could go down, the power couplings might rupture… any number of possible failures that somehow we were going to avoid.

It was almost as if some higher power was watching out for us, giving us a nudge in the right direction. At least, it was my hope that it was a nudge in the right direction. In a world where gigantic biomechanical constructs wage war against biblically named monsters and somehow I go from getting turned into chutney by a city bus to suddenly becoming a character from what for all intents and purposes was a work of fiction… well, if it wasn't a higher power, I didn't really know what to believe in anymore.

Still, at least the scientists working on the multiverse theory would be pleased to know that they were at least partially correct, I supposed.

The floor vibrated suddenly, almost imperceptibly. I could only guess that it was in some way related to the Angel. I stumbled but caught myself against the wall, I was shaking again. Whether it was nerves or drugs, I didn't know.

"Ayanami! You made it!" I heard from in front of me. I looked up and saw Shimata standing halfway out of a doorway cut into the wall, I must have made it to the cages sooner than I'd thought I would.

X

I leaned back against the railing and stared up at the night sky. It was so peaceful; I found it easy to lose myself in that feeling, that illusion of calm. If only I could have forgotten about the angelic diamond floating over my home the illusion would have been complete.

"Ayanami." I heard Ikari say to me from his position on the scaffolding next to me. "Why do you pilot eva?"

I turned towards him, startled by his question but at the same time expecting it. "Because somebody has to and I can… because I won't make you do it alone." I said finally, quietly.

"I think I understand." He said as he looked at Unit-01's head.

"Why do you do it?" I asked him in return, it was only fair after all. _'Not that I'm not curious.'_ I thought to myself.

"I… don't know." He said after a pause. He looked at the angel thoughtfully as it continued to drill into the geo-front, "but… when I figure it out, I'll let you know, Ayanami."

"Rei." I said abruptly.

"What?" he asked.

"You can call me Rei." I said in clarification. If we were going to save the world together, we needed to be comfortable around each other, this was step one. At least, that's what I was hoping.

"Then you can call me Shinji… Rei." He said finally, I could swear I detected a faint pinkness on his cheeks.

"Well, Shinji, I think it's time." I said as I stood and moved towards the entry plug for my eva. "let's get out there and win."

* * *

You know the drill, R&R.


	7. Divergence

Chapter 7 is alive!

wrote this one while not having slept for 36 hours, tell me what you think.

* * *

_Click._

I stared at the status display projected inside my entry plug, it showed current charge levels and that I was on external power.

_Click._

I stabbed a button on the control yoke and the display cycled, it was showing me the countdown till it was time to take the shot. _'Only ten more minutes till we light this candle.' _ I thought to myself as I stared past the projection and towards the angel, still drilling.

_Click._

The display cycled to an elaborate map of the entire Tokyo-3 region, the locations of all the charging stations and the anti-angel intercept emplacements were projected onto the topographical map. That was certainly a nifty feature.

_Click._

I cycled the projection back to the countdown. _'Two minutes left…'_ Shinji was positioning the exceedingly elaborate rifle on the cement platform, preparing to fire. I honestly didn't remember the rifle being so… unfinished, so crude, and yet so very elaborate. The gun I'd remembered, foggy as that memory might be, was a simple affair, this was nothing like that.

"_Photon accelerators charged to ninety percent, fuse is locked in place, estimate ready to fire in thirty seconds."_ I heard via the radio, among other less readily important chatter. Then, suddenly, the entire sky lit up as weapons emplacements across the city suddenly and violently began firing on the angel.

The response was immediate, it shifted from its diamond shape y into some kind of diamond ringed rapidly spinning wagon wheel. This was definitely new territory. Innumerable emplacements exploded suddenly, and even more rose up to replace them.

I looked to the corner of my plug and saw Shinji preparing to fire, crunch time. I crouched down, clutching the shield for all I was worth, waiting for the instant where I'd spring forth and take the hit. Any second now Shinji would fire, and so would the Angel.

The light was blinding, I raised my hand up to shield my eyes, Shinji had fired and the beam had lanced out and slammed into the Angel, which immediately pulled back into itself. "That was anti-climactic…" I whispered to myself.

Suddenly the Angel shifted again, still alive, and turned into something not dissimilar to a crystalline starfish, then the beam came. I had no time to react, suddenly the mountain in front of me disappeared and everything exploded. I dropped to a knee and slammed a fist into the ground; the blast still rocked the Eva and nearly threw me from my seat.

"What the hell!" I yelled as my display cleared up, Unit-01 was still there, still holding the big ass gun, and everything else was a mess. Trailers, tents, a lot of the electrical equipment designed to power and cool the positron rifle were cast about, it would be a miracle if any of it still worked and yet I had to hope that it did, because if not, we were deader than… well, _old_ me.

The Angel shifted again; it was going to fire again. Shinji reset the fuse on the rifle. I launched Unit-00 in front of him and stabbed the massive shield into the semi-molten concrete and stuck a shoulder into it right as the beam hit it.

'_Jesus this thing doesn't know when to quit!' _ I thought to myself as I braced against the shield. _'Any time now Shinji, just go ahead and shoot.' _The status displays were flashing angry red and orange tones at me, armor heating was extreme, warnings were telling me that not only was the shield about to go, my own armor was beginning to liquefy.

Then it struck me like I just jumped into the sun, the shield let go and the full force of the beam slammed into Unit-00. "Just… a… little… bit… more…" I forced through clenched teeth as the LCL around me began to cook me alive in my own plugsuit.

'**Emergency Egress System Activated'**flashed across my displays right as I saw the beam leave Shinji's rifle. Then my stomach tried to force its way into my uterus as the entry plug was ejected forcefully from Unit-00's spine. I felt the solid rocket boosters kick in only to cut out an instant later and I felt myself in free fall even as the superheated LCL was vented from the plug.

"Oh shit." I realized exactly what was about to happen, or, had a very good guess. Suddenly I stopped falling, and without the LCL to cushion the impact my head slammed back into the seat and I lost consciousness.

X

"_So," I asked Beckett as he got into the car, "what brings you to Dallas?" When he sat down I got a look at him, he looked tired, worn out._

"_How did you get a Chevelle? I _Know_ the military doesn't pay that well." He said, ignoring my question. I stared out the windshield and shifted into fourth._

"_It was my mom's, so what brings you to Dallas?" I asked again._

"_Well, everybody was worried about you, we haven't seen you since the memorial, so you know…" he trailed off._

"_Well, I'm fine if you don't count the fact that I've only got one lung, now that you know, you can go back and tell everybody I'm fine." I said flatly as I merged onto the interstate._

"_Don't give me that crap Saito, you're not fine, anybody could see that. You can't act like Sarge's death didn't bother you, he saved your life on the _Farragut_, and besides that you were the only Japanese people in the unit." He paused for a moment and took a breath, "Besides, do you think we were all blind? I know you two were close."_

_My hand twitched on the shifter, I could feel the tears forming but I pushed them back, "I'm Korean, and it's none of your business… besides which, that would have been against regulations, you know that." I sighed and flicked the turn signal to get off at the upcoming exit._

_Becket looked at me expectantly, "I don't believe you, but if that's how you want to be, I'll let it go… for now. So, what's here?"_

"_I need a drink."_

X

I cracked my eyes open slowly, the bright light hurt for a moment before my eyes adjusted. My whole body was sore and it felt like I had steel rods driven through my thigh. White tile ceiling, hospital wing again it seemed. My face felt strange, like something was stuck to it.

I reached up and felt an oxygen mask, I pulled it off and tilted my head up to look around the room. I caught sight of my right leg and knew immediately why it felt like steel rods were driven through my thigh, because they were, I must have broken it pretty badly when the plug ejected.

"Shinji?" I asked as my eyes caught in sitting in the corner of the room. My voice felt off, my throat was sore when I spoke.

"Rei! You're awake, I was worried; they said you could have died! But you're awake now so… how do you feel?" he asked as he rushed over to my bedside, his excitement to see me conscious was… unexpected but not unliked.

"I feel soft-boiled, what happened?" I asked as I tried not to concentrate on the headache I was so intensely aware of. I noticed the bandages on his hands, had that happened again?

"You plug ejected but it didn't work right, it fell to the ground, I… I got you out of it but you weren't awake, I tried to cool you off and then help showed up and took care of you." He rattled off quickly, "Um, thank you, for what you did" he added.

Was he talking about blocking that shot? That was probably the only thing I could have done in that situation, I can't say I was happy to do it, but it wasn't like I minded, all things considered, "You're welcome. Can you get me some water?" I asked. The burning in my throat was getting intense.

"Sure."

X

"I thought we agreed you were going to act with a plan from now on." Shimata said with a trace of humor in his voice, "Unless of course making Ayanami gumbo was your plan."

"That wouldn't sound half bad if I didn't hate okra." I replied deadpan. My throat was killing me, my leg wasn't much better. "Couldn't let him do it alone though, could I?" I asked.

"No, I suppose not, and it could have gone worse." He admitted.

"Could have gone better." I replied, gesturing to my pinned and braced leg, "they said I was lucky to keep the leg. Compound fracture, bone was sticking out in three different places. Really glad I wasn't awake for that."

He looked almost shocked. "I'm surprised you're feeling so well in that case" he said, looking over the brace bolted to my right leg.

"I'm on a superhuman dosage of morphine right now." I replied with a grin, gesturing with the lovely red button on a stick firmly encased in my right hand. "Is this a social or a business visit?" I asked.

"Can it be both?" he asked with a laugh. "I wanted to see how you were, I stopped by before you woke up but they called me again when you came to" He explained, "so we came right over."

"Oh, I see… Wait, 'we'? Who is we?" I asked right before I heard a knock at the door, both Shimata and I looked to see a middle aged Caucasian man poking his upper body around the door frame.

He noticed me first, then looked to Shimata, "Jun, she is uh… girl visit?" he asked in extremely broken Japanese. I laughed despite myself. _'huh, Shimata's first name is Jun, he'd never told me before.' _ I thought to myself.

"_Your Japanese sucks, by the way"_ I couldn't help but add in English. The man seemed oddly familiar but I couldn't place the face. _"I guess _he_ is the other part of your 'we'?"_ I asked Shimata who had moved halfway across the room by that point.

"_Yeah, actually" _he answered, "_Rei, meet Aaron Beckett. Beckett, meet Ayanami Rei."_ He finished while gesturing towards each of us in turn. I flinched as soon as he said the name, it couldn't be the same guy, and yet the similarities were there. _"Beckett and I served together in the Marines"_ he further explained.

"_Ah, so you're the girl he bodyguards for." _Beckett said, his English obviously much better than his Japanese, _"Your English is pretty good at least, but you don't seem very much like he's described."_ So, Shimata had been talking about me? That was certainly interesting information.

"_What brings you to Nerv's finest hospital anyway" _I asked,wondering what could have brought him along, did he know? We he a hitchhiker too?

The man laughed at my non-joke, _"Well, Jun's car broke down so he asked me for a ride, that's all really. I keep telling him that he's actually allowed to get the oil changed _before _the engine starts squealing but he doesn't listen."_

Shimata would likely have made some kind of rebuttal at that point had my worst fear not suddenly come to pass in the form of one Ikari Gendo waltzing through the door at that very moment. Perhaps waltzing is not the right word but it wasn't a strut and it certainly wasn't a saunter.

Mentally I imagined him waltzing and privately enjoyed how amusing that would look, at least until he cleared his throat. I snapped out of my daydream and saw the deer in headlight's look on Jun's face, Beckett on the other hand didn't understand what the big deal was when he was dragged rapidly from the room by his friend.

And as suddenly as he arrived, I was alone with the supreme commander of Nerv. Deep in my mind I knew he couldn't be as bad as fans had always depicted him, there was no way in the world that a real human being could be the caricature he was always portrayed as.

"Rei, you've been avoiding me." He said finally as he took a seat at the side of my bed. "Is something wrong?" he asked me, I could swear there was real concern in his voice.

My mind raced, possibilities flooded my consciousness: did Gendo actually care for Rei? I'd been concerned all along that he'd be pissed off that his puppet had stopped obeying but had I just been playing into the caricature of Gendo and not the 'real' Gendo? This was even worse, if he actually cared for Rei and I'd effectively _killed her_ just by existing…

"Rei?" he prompted, his voice now slightly confused, how long had I been sitting there like a mute fool?

"I have been feeling… not like myself recently." I offered, speaking softly. In my mind I was panicking, how the hell was I going to get out of this?

He took his glasses off and I could see his eyes, "What do you mean?" he asked, softly, or as soft as his voice could sound.

I had an idea, it was risky but I'd already talked my way into a corner, smart under pressure I clearly was not. "I have been having dreams… or memories, but they are not mine. In the dreams I am somebody else, somebody in a war." I said slowly, eyes fixed on his face to see his reaction. "They are… confusing."

I couldn't come up with a lie, but maybe I could use the truth to get my way out of this, the worst he could do is kill me, and it's not like I hadn't died before.

"I see…" he said before putting his glasses back on. He put a hand to his chin and leaned back in the chair. "Rei, you can come to me when things like this happen." He offered as he stood up, "I'm going to look into this for you."

I nodded dumbly as he left the room, what had I just gotten myself into?

I laid my head back on the pillow and closed my eyes; maybe I could escape into my dreams.

X

"_Kas, don't you think you've had enough?" Beckett asked me as I ordered another shot, he hadn't drunk anything and I was already ten shots deep into a bottle of Jack._

"_Didn't know we were on a first name basis Aaron, and no, I don't think I've had enough to drink yet because I can only see one of you and I haven't thrown up yet." I slurred back before I threw the shot back, by this point it didn't even burn anymore. What did he know anyway?_

_I tried to order another shot and the bartender cut me off, "Ma'am, I can't give you any more, you look like you're about to fall off that stool."_

"_Kas, come on, let me take you home this was a bad idea" Beckett urged as he grabbed my arm to escort me out of the bar. He wasn't expecting the fist that cracked against his jaw a second later; he certainly wasn't expecting it to be _my_ fist._

X

My eyes snapped open and immediately the sunlight burned my eyes, having a room facing the massive geofront skylights was less than desirable it seemed. I put my hand in front of my eyes as they adjusted to wakefulness when I noticed the person entering the room.

"Shimata?" I asked confusedly as I saw him standing there holding the handles to a wheelchair.

"Rei, an Angel has been spotted, you need to deploy immediately." He said urgently as he made to start unhooking the monitors attached to me.

"What?" was all I could say, this definitely wasn't going as it was supposed to.

* * *

Oh darn, things are diverging from (tv show) cannon.


	8. Revelation

This chapter probably sucks.

* * *

"Ahhh!" I gasped as the Eva slammed into the locks at the top of the catapult rails, being back in the saddle so soon wasn't comfortable considering the brace and pins still in my leg but I had a job to do.

Of course it was a job that I wasn't supposed to have to be doing, but more and more was changing and I didn't like it one bit. I stabbed the control buttons on the butterfly handle and brought up a tactical display: The angel was projected as a red blob on a digital version of Tokyo-3, a separate second dot was identified as Katsuragi's car.

"She's out of her mind…" I mumbled to myself, wondering why she was even out here during a battle. At least it, somewhat, explained why I was deployed in such a hurried and haphazard manner, they didn't tell me anything just handed me a gun and said 'go kill it' more or less.

'_So, I kill it.'_ I thought to myself as I raised the rifle to Unit-00's eye and sighted down the massive optical scope, looking in the direction that the Angel was projected to arrive from. Then I saw it, it looked like nothing I'd ever seen, it looked like some kind of geometric skeletal bar bell with a sphere at one end and it's head on the other, walking on two hundred foot stilts, freezing the blood red water wherever it stepped.

"What the _fuck_ is that…" I muttered as it fired on some Japanese frigates that must have been deployed to fight it, for what little good they must have known it could do. I checked the targeting assist on the rifle, now that I knew how, and lined up a shot on the 'head' of the Angel, the Eva-sized M82A3 knockoff I held in my hands bucked with the force of an artillery cannon as I fired three shots at the head, they blasted right through the mask without even hitting an AT field.

The newly perforated mask turned to look at me and it swirled again, charging to fire just as it had on the ships when a streak of light slammed into it and it liquefied. I lowered the rifle and turned my head to follow the tracer when I saw it, I couldn't even make out much detail until I magnified the image, and there it was, Unit-02 in the flesh airdropping towards the angel with some kind of weapon that looked for all the world like a starwars inspired bow-caster.

'_That is _not_ how this is supposed to happen!'_ I screamed internally as the Angel began to fall apart and then, just as quickly, began to pull itself back together again. I pulled back the zoom to normal and watched a series of flashes from where I knew Unit-02 was falling through the sky followed by my sensors registering and alerting me to a massive rush of wind as a _visible_ AT field projected right above the Angel.

I raised the rifle back to Unit-00's eye and fired another volley of shots, maybe I could distract it and assist whoever was piloting Unit-02, with as much else had changed I had no confidence at all that it would be Asuka Langley Soryu, it could be Joe Smith for all I knew. The shots pinged off an AT field this time; odd branching black spikes forked towards me with ill intent.

I dropped the rifle and jumped backwards, the force of the jump shifted me uncomfortably against the braces holding me in my seat: my leg was throbbing. I stumbled when I hit the ground; apparently my _real_ pain was translating into a limp in my eva, wonderful.

Suddenly the Angel exploded, I looked up to see Unit-02 falling towards me right as my proximity alarm went off, the contact of Katsuragi's car on my tactical display was right next to me, and Unit-02 was coming right down on top of me. I dropped to a knee and cupped my hands protectively over the car as retro-rockets fired on Unit-02 and it slammed into the pavement, kicking up debris. I turned my head up to look at the red evangelion, it still looked like the Unit-02 I remembered, and yet subtly different.

"_Mission Accomplished!" _It announced in a girl's voice as it put its hands to its hips.

'_Maybe it _is_ Asuka…'_ I thought to myself as I stood back up, the car containing Katsuragi… and Shinji, I could now see, would, while banged up, live to see another day.

X

I wasn't looking forward to the debriefing as I crutched down the hall towards the meeting room, but at least I got to take a shower first, small comfort. The mission had, in my opinion, gone smoothly, that wasn't what I was worried about.

The real problem was what happened when I was returning to the cage. "And it's their own damn fault." I muttered to myself as a repair crew passed me in the opposite direction. _'Oh… it's that bad huh… this is gonna fucking suck.'_

"Ayanami?" I heard ahead of me, I looked up to see Katsuragi walking towards me, "They didn't send anybody to come get you!" she asked incredulously. _'I'd have liked that but most of them weren't entirely pleased…' _ I thought to myself.

"It's fine, I've walked on worse" I admitted without thinking about it. It was true, but not for Rei, I needed to stop fucking up. "You are aware of the incident?" I asked her, diverting the subjection before she could question it.

"I don't think there's anybody who isn't, Rei, I'd be surprised if they didn't feel it in Matsushiro, what the hell happened?" she asked me. I was completely unable to read her, which wasn't that surprising if I was going to be honest with myself.

"Psychosomatic feedback, I think," I started, laying on the technobabble, "the pain in my leg translated into a limp in the Eva, and I tripped." I explained.

"Into a primary support column, destabilizing and subsequently collapsing fifteen percent of headquarters." She added.

"That… would not be inaccurate." I admitted, I could feel an embarrassed blush coming on and I could do nothing to fight it. "In my defense… I shouldn't have been asked to pilot in my condition."

Katsuragi frowned at that, "I didn't ask you to launch, I had planned to but unit-02 launched instead, I didn't even know you were out there until I saw unit-00."

"Shimata took me to the cages from my hospital room, he said I was needed there but he didn't mention who had ordered the launch…" I trailed off, wondering.

"I'll look into it. As for what happened, that's not your fault… not really. Go home and get some sleep, we'll talk about this later." She said to me and turned around. She looked pissed, I was just glad her ire wasn't directed at me.

I started to crutch towards the surface lift then changed my mind and instead headed for section two. I had some questions for Shimata, like why Beckett was in the country, and if Richards was here too, and who the hell told him to send me out there.

X

"He's not here?" I asked nobody in particular as I entered Shimata's office to find it empty, not only of him but of most of his things as well. It certainly wasn't looking good for him to be innocent of any wrongdoing to have apparently fled.

I hobbled around the desk to see if there was anything that might indicate why or where he had gone and was not disappointed: a small shoebox with a note taped to it sitting on his vacant chair. I picked up the note and read it to myself.

'_If you're who I think you are, than I was right and this was all for something worthwhile. If you're not, well, then I was wrong and it doesn't matter anyway.  
_

_So 'chief' if you found this, I was right, so take what I left in the box and watch your ass, there's more going on than you know. We've gone off mission already but they didn't know what we know, so it'll be okay, and I'll see you again._

_P.S. This should be more your size'_

I stared at the letter for a moment before pocketing it and popping the lid off the box. I was greeted by the familiar black steel of a colt pistol loaded into a holster and a twenty round box of super thirty-eight.

'_What in the hell have you gotten yourself into Jun?'_ I thought to myself as I slipped the box of ammo into my bag and slid the holster around my waist and tucked it under my shirt. I tossed the empty box into the corner of the room and crutched towards the door, wondering if he knew what I knew, if he knew who I was.

Maybe that's why I was there, maybe that's why _he_ was there, we were being given a second chance to do something right. It was dumb wishful thinking but it was still what I wanted to believe.

I slipped back into the hallway and crutched my way towards a surface lift when I noticed the maintenance worker who seemed to be tailing me. Well, if that's how he wanted to play it, I'd play along. I popped into the second open lift in the row and pressed the button for the surface, I'd come out within a block or so of my apartment so it actually worked out pretty good for what I had planned.

The weight of the gun was reassuring as the lift ascended, it was heavy, and it felt loaded. If I knew Jun, and it seemed more and more like my memory was returning, he'd have left it with a full magazine and one in the pipe.

The lift doors started to open; I popped the catch on the holster and drew the gun while limping out of the lift, my crutches laying across the open lift doors. It was the moment of truth; if I was truly being followed the next lift down the row would be opening in moments.

I checked the chamber and disengaged the safety as the second lift opened. I coiled up on my good leg and waited… then jumped when I saw the yellow jumpsuit pass through the doorway. The launch was sloppy but I hooked my right arm around his neck and jammed the barrel of the colt into his lower back.

"_Don't you know it's not nice to stalk a girl?"_ I asked in deliberately sing-song english while twisting the gun. _"So tell me, American? You're not from around these parts for damn sure if I had to guess I'd say Marine Special Forces, but you're getting kind of sloppy, must have been a while huh? You just here to follow me? Or maybe it's a hit?" _ I asked.

He turned his head a little bit, I recognized the face, I should have been surprised but nothing was really surprising anymore, _"No, you're not here for me, you're here to find out why Shimata and Bucket went off mission, you thought following me from his office might give you some answers, eh Richards?"_

I felt the impact before I knew what happened and I was on the ground clutching my stomach with my free hand, still pointing the gun, apparently he hadn't fully lost his touch because I hadn't seen the elbow coming till it was too late.

"_So who the fuck are you really then, because Rei Ayanami wouldn't have known any of that shit, she wouldn't have known who I was, and she wouldn't have called Beckett that, so _do_ you know why Jun and Aaron went off grid?" _he asked me with his own gun pointed at me.

"_Don't play fucking stupid Jack, I've given you more than enough to know who I am, you of all people should realize what fucking world we're living in, you owned the fucking box set, you asked _me _not to tell anybody else in the unit because you thought they would make fun of you!" _I half yelled, half laughed, fully enveloped in the complete bat-shit insanity of the situation I found myself in.

"_Saito!" _ he asked in shock, his gun dipping and pointing towards the ground.

"The one and only." I answered, slipping back into Japanese and pushing myself off the ground, re-holstering my gun, "So now that I've finally established that I'm not the only one to get sucked into this universe, why don't we try figuring out why half of a marine special forces unit got stuck in an anime, and, while we're at it, you explain to me what Jun and Aaron's mission was."

"Well, it's a long story, the three of us have been here for a very very long time, Kasumi, the short version is that we were going to kill key figures responsible for third impact after the final angel was killed, to prevent third impact." He started to explain as he helped me away from the lifts.

"But you didn't expect it to have changed like this." I offered, "Hell, there may not even _be_ a third impact, let alone one caused in the exact same way we remember, though, if your age is any indication, they are memories that are about thirty five years old at best. No, and I'll bet you didn't expect I'd be Rei Ayanami either."

He nodded and we continued to walk towards my apartment before another thought struck me, "Hey Richards, Jun died in Afghanistan, I died in Plano in twenty twelve, but as far as I knew you and Bucket were still alive then, how the hell are you even here?"

He gave me a strange look, "Beckett and I lived out the rest of our lives Kas. I don't really know how all this time and universe thing works, but it seems like we were all reborn as ourselves in the same year we were originally born, except for you. There _was_ a Kasumi Saito, but she wasn't you, it was something the rest of us could never figure out. Well, not until now anyway."

"Where is she now?" I asked out of morbid curiosity.

"Dead." He answered simply, bitterly.

"Dead?" I asked, more than a little off put.

"She wasn't you, she didn't remember the world before, but she was exactly like you in every other way. In Afghanistan the bullet that killed Shimata in our timeline killed you instead; she jumped in front of it pushing him out of the way."

"Huh, last time I tried that I got hit by a bus." I remarked offhandedly after he told the story. "Wait, second impact happened before that in this timeline, what the hell were you doing in Afghanistan?

"Different timeline, but apparently some things are just fated to happen; it was the same war, the exact same crash… Just for different reasons this time." He said somberly.

"So, maybe I can help you out as to why we're here." I offered, eager to direct the subject away from my alternate self's death, "When I woke up in this life the first time I had a dream soon after, the, for lack of a better word, _real_ Ayanami Rei told me she brought me here to make things better where she couldn't, maybe you're here to help me do that, or I'm here to help _you_ do that, either way, we need to make sure that we succeed, I don't feel like dying at the age of fourteen."

"Alright I'll bite, what do we do?" he asked, his face a mask of contemplation.

"First thing's first, you need to get Beckett and Shimata back on mission, something spooked them but I _need_ Shimata to stick with section two or else I'll have nobody to get me out of trouble. I don't know what else is going to be different but I can't wing this on my own" I explained, "and the second thing, assuming that what held true in the show still holds true in this universe, I should be capable of generating an AT field, i need to figure out how..."

"Anything else?" he asked as I stopped walking and leaned on a guardrail by the roadside.

"Yeah, carry me, this broken leg thing is zero fun."


	9. The Sky is Falling

So, this is a new chapter, it's been a while huh.

I'm not dead, i promise!

* * *

I sipped from the sweating water glass; I felt like ripping my hair out. It had been almost three weeks since Jun had gone into the wind and I hadn't been able to even confirm that he was still alive, let alone still in Japan. This made my life interesting in that the only other person inside the organization I could count on was Richards and he was under cover as a maintenance tech so his utility was limited.

That wasn't the source of my current frustration, that honor belonged solely to Asuka Langley Shikinami, who was proclaiming loudly and to whoever would listen just how awesome she was. As I remembered it, she was going to be torn to ribbons and eaten alive by monstrous parodies of her own evangelion. So it goes.

I rolled my eyes to the side, there was a bird sitting on the window ledge pecking at a crack in the weather stripping. It seemed to notice me looking at it, locked eyes with me for a moment and just as quickly took to the air and flew out of sight.

I envied that bird.

'_Screw it'_ I thought to myself. I grabbed my bag and exited the classroom via the back door, engaging in the time honored tradition of ditching class. The sensei was too distracted, splitting his attention between teaching class and dealing with the disruption caused by five feet of red headed arrogance to notice my own departure, not that it would have stopped me anyway. I'd long since given up caring.

Though that may have just been the sleep deprivation talking, something I'd planned to rectify forthwith; I stalked down the hallway to the staircase and casually sauntered up the two flights to the roof. I pushed open the thin metal door and was met with a less than oppresive rush of warm air and a completely deserted rooftop, an ideal napping place; I picked a shady spot next to an inactive condensing unit and propped my head up on my bag, I was out the second my eyes shut.

Sleep was dreamless, rejuvinating, and calm. I wasn't sure what time it was when I finally woke up, though I quickly determined two things, the first was that the sun was still up, the second that I wasn't alone.

"Hello." I stated simply to the boy standing above me.

"You missed class." He said simply.

"I did." I agreed, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. He sat down next to me as I sat up, he looked bothered. "So, do you come up here often or were you looking for me, Ikari?"

"Shinji."

"Right." I remembered the agreement we'd made. "So, were you looking for me, Shinji?" I asked.

He relaxed against the condenser unit. "I guess I was" he admitted. "I… don't know if I can keep doing this, I'm not like you, you seem so sure of yourself and I… I'm scared Rei, every time I get in that thing… I'm terrified." He sighed and looked down into his lap "I'm just a coward, always running away."

I put my hand on his, he flinched; I wasn't surprised. "Shinji, you _didn't_ run away, you saved me. You're not a coward, you're the bravest of all of us." I encouraged. "Courage is pushing on even when you're scared, when you're terrified but you keep going for the people who count on you."

"You… really think so?"

"Shinji, you climbed into a machine you'd never seen before, to save a girl you'd never met before, you knew it was suicide but you wouldn't let me go through that. There are grown men who would have fled; I think you're the bravest person I know." I finished, my hand firmly wrapped around his. It was warm, slightly moist, he was nervous.

He squeezed back, he lifted his head and smiled.

Then the siren went off and ruined the moment.

XXX

I sat in the control saddle rolling over in my head again how I'd gotten to where I was, standing, waiting for a signal to catch a living bomb, an Angel, that was going to kill itself to kill us… unless we stopped it. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back in the seat… and remembered.

"_We're catching it, with our hands." Asuka asked incredulously._

"_Well, Eva's hands." I corrected under my breath._

"_Yes, you're going to catch it, and kill it, or it's going to kill, us to put it simply." Katsuragi stated. "I'm not going to force you to do it, you can run away, we can all run away."_

"_What are our chances?" Shinji asked finally._

"_Not very good, the numbers are pretty depressing." She admitted._

_My fellow pilots looked unsure, I was unsure, but, there was something bigger than us, something we had to fight for. I looked at the palm of my hand and worked my fingers back and forth, flexing my hand, something I'd seen somebody else do long ago… _

"_This is a fighting hand." I said to myself, quietly. _

_Everybody looked at me._

_So maybe it wasn't that quiet. They looked for some kind of explanation or clarification. I held out my hands in front of me and flexed them, looking into my palms and then back up to everybody else, "My hands... they are fighting hands, that's what I'm good at, that's what I'm here for, that's what we are here for, that's what every soldier since the beginning of time has been for. We're fighting to keep others from having to fight." I said, turning my glance towards Shinji._

"_Or fighting for others who can't fight on their own," I continued, "to protect those who need protecting, and right now there's a lot of people out there who need us; so that's what we do, what we're meant to do, and that's what I'm going to do, so count me in." I concluded, surprised at my own intensity, surprised that I'd even spoken up._

Katsuragi had been surprised, Shinji and Asuka didn't know me well enough before I changed to know any better.

It was going to be really interesting to see how everything turned out after all this, especially considering how I'd pretty much confessed to the commander that I wasn't who I appeared to be…

But even so, there was a job to do, we were going to save the world, at least one more time.

My leg felt tight, the bone still wasn't healed fully and the throbbing ache was never far from my mind, I just hoped that the sympathetic link didn't work both ways, it wouldn't do for my Eva to cramp up and trip on this sprint we were about to attempt.

There was a countdown timer ticking by on the heads up display, less than a minute left. I pulled a switch on the right control stick and a link opened to the other two Eva units, Shinji and Asuka were both concentrating on their own countdown timers. They saw my window open and each nodded. I smiled, we could do this, I was sure of it.

"_Get ready. You're going to have to rely on your own best judgement, visual data is not reliable, good luck."_ I heard Katsuragi say over the radio.

I dropped my unit into a crouch, ready to launch at a moment's notice. My muscles, the Eva's muscles tensed up, ready to spring in an instant.

"_Launch!"_ She yelled, and I sprung. I could see the rainbow colored ball falling towards the earth and I pushed with everything I had, dirt, gravel, and pavement were flung from the earth in my wake as I tore through the country side.

I tried to ignore the pain in my leg as I focused on the path being superimposed on my heads up display, a faint red track to be followed based on Katsuragi's best guess. My eyes flicked up to check the position of the Angel, it was changing, it's shape opening up, it's course was shifting. I looked ahead again, power lines, I kicked free from the earth and hurdled the high tension cables like an olympic athlete, crashing back into the earth with the force of a locomotive and pushing even harder.

I checked again and the Angel seemed to be dropping faster, I wasn't going to make it there on time, that was for sure. The course shifted again, the line moved, I turned to follow it as best I could, the huge size and inertia of the Eva did not lend itself to rapid course correction but I did my damnedest.

The Angel was low, so very very low, and then the shockwave and the flash of light, and I could see Shinji's unit in the distance, ready to catch the Angel all by himself, and I knew he could do it…and yet still…

I shoved the control sticks forward into their locks and the Eva gained a burst of speed. I could see Asuka's unit pushing towards the Angel ahead of me, she'd get there first, but just barely. They disappeared behind the last hill as I closed in, the Angel was still above, they still hadn't killed it, and then I cleared the hill and knew why.

Unit-02 was holding a knife, ready to strike the core, but the core was spinning around in its race like a ball bearing, she was frozen; I wasn't. I planted my feet and slid the last hundred meters to the Angel and latched onto the core with my hands, locking it into place. I felt the burning through the neural feedback almost instantly, and Unit-02 still wasn't moving. "Asuka, do it now!" I screamed over the com link.

"_Just what the hell do you think I'm doing!" _ she screamed back through the radio and a second later both knives were slammed into the Angel's core, followed by a bright red knee. The red sphere split like a glass bead, the Angel went limp, the world turned red in a shower of blood.

I had just sarted to relax in my seat when a warning tone filled the plug, my eyes snapped to the display, radar lock. I saw the trail, a rocket was headed straight for me. _'No, missile' _ I thought, correcting my first assessment, '_MANPAD?'_

I threw my hand up to deploy an AT field and in that moment all power died, the battery timer clicked to zero. A moment later I heard the dull thud of the warhead exploding against the Eva's armor. A second explosion followed and I felt my teeth rattle as the shockwave shook the plug. The Eva was still shutdown, but if there was enough power for the radio…

I pulled the activation switch on the control yoke and heard the radio crackle, there was enough power for that, "This is Unit zero, I'm under attack!" I yelled into the radio. Static answered me, and I had a feeling deep in my gut that the rocket must have taken out the radio arial. I felt the plug lurch backwards, it was being extracted and I hadn't even tried, knew there probably wasn't the power for it.

A moment later gravity seemed to disappear and then I felt the plug hit the ground, I scrambled out of the control chair as the LCL drained out of the plug. I grabbed at the seam of the seat pad and pulled it up, the Jun had given me was hidden under it, even though I never imagined I would need it.

'_Preparation has it's benefits'_ I thought as the hatch cracked and the light poured in, I could hear a helicopter and I heard yelling, yelling in english.

"_Come out with your hands in the air and you won't be harmed!"_ The accent screamed Brooklyn. Brooklyn was under water. I racked the action on the colt and fired it out the door, I heard cursing and then a metal cylinder bounced in through the open hatch and started spewing smoke.

My gun clicked empty and I threw it to the end of the plug. The smoke started irritating my lungs, I couldn't breathe, I edged towards the fresh air coming in through the hatch when the hands reached in and dragged me out.

An object flashed across my vision, I recognized it as an M4 Carbine immediately before it collided with my head and I stopped seeing entirely.

* * *

Oh sh-


	10. Escape

The long awaited Chapter 10, Escape.

* * *

My eyes slowly cracked open, the light hurt. My head was pounding like a drummer's cadence. I could taste potatos. I realized I probably had a concussion, and then also that I was strapped to a metal folding chair.

I finally managed to force my eyes open enough that I could see; everything was in double. Definitely a concussion. Somebody was yelling something at me, there was a flash of light on chrome, a gun barrel. My head was jerked to the side by a strong hand, more screaming, I couldn't make it out over the high pitched whine in my ears.

"Chief Kasumi Saito, Serial num-" I heard myself saying before I was cut off by a strong hand jerking my hair again.

My head was jerked back towards the front and I saw a needle coming towards my face, panic kicked in, my hair stood on end, a moment later there was a flash of orange, then a flash of red, and I was on the floor, still strapped to my chair, as consciousness left me I could see the red pooling in the corner of the room.

_I was sitting in the back seat of a family sedan, watching the scenery pass by lazily. I felt small in the back seat, and recognized the car, my grandfather's old caprice; I must have been about eight. My grandpa was driving us over to his house; I always spent the weekends there growing up. I smiled when I saw the house up ahead, a modest two-story he built with his own hands. I looked at the rearview mirror and he smiled at me, that goofy grandpa grin that he always had._

_The crunch of the gravel under the new tires was reassuring, grandma was standing by the house up ahead, she was smiling too; we were going to make cookies this weekend in time for Christmas, the snow was already covering the yard and the pond was frozen. Grandpa got out of the car and opened the rickety old garage, the garage my dad had spent most of his youth tinkering in. He came back; we pulled in, and then got out into the cold winter air. I ran to my grandma, deftly avoiding slipping on the ice and embraced her in a hug, I felt my grandpa pat his hand on my head._

I jerked awake, my face was deep in cold water, and then it wasn't. I choked and coughed out the water from my lungs and scanned my eyes around the room while I retched.

I saw half a dozen men with guns pointed at me, my hair began to stand on end again, then I felt a sharp shock, my body convulsed and I went slack, out cold again.

_The tears were wet on my face, my dad put his arm around my shoulder. The casket in front of me contained the remains of my grandfather, world war two veteran, postman, and the greatest man I had ever known. He was why I enlisted in the first place, the reason I always went out of my way to help others, he was… somebody who if I could be even a tenth the person he was, I would have been okay._

"_Its okay" my dad said, "after your grandma passed… he was ready to go."_

"_I know…" I said, sadly, "but I wasn't."_

I woke up again, the room was empty this time and I wasn't face deep in a bucket of water; the back of my neck burned. They must have used a stun gun on me. I was wearing what looked like medical scrubs and I could see faint scars on my body when I looked under them.

Faint scars and a few fresh scars, I noted, and a row of stitches down my rib cage, had they been experimenting on me? How long had I been here? Why was I remembering my grandfather?

I sat up and I felt a tingly energy flowing through my body, and then it was gone. I slipped out of the bed and examined the room, one window in the wall, simple architecture, modern Japanese but… not like any place I'd been before. I heard the lock on the decidedly western door click and I shuffled behind it, waiting.

"…and we've yet to actually find any… yes I know… yes I'm checking on her now… yes I'll get back to you on it." I heard a voice say, as if into a radio or a phone, the door cracked open and they started to walk through.

I grabbed the handle of the door and slammed myself against it, bouncing it repeatedly off of whoever was coming through, I heard a yelp and they fell backwards through the door, I pulled it open and rushed through, the man was on his hands and knees trying to get back up, I dropped onto him and wrapped my arm around his neck and squeezed, cutting off blood flow to his brain.

In a few seconds he went slack and dropped to the floor, his head making a dull thud against the wooden floor. He would be down for a little while, I decided as I moved past him, looking around the modest dwelling, it appeared to be some kind of farm house.

I heard footsteps and quickly scanned the room looking for a place to hide, there was a small section of paneling missing on the baseboard of the far wall from the room, it looked like I might be able to pry it loose without much effort, I shifted myself across the room as quickly as I could, careful to balance on my feet to avoid making too much noise.

The footsteps were closer now, I grabbed at the panel and pulled, it popped open instantly, I noticed it was hinged, a hiding place? I crawled inside the alcove and pulled the board down behind me as the source of the footsteps entered the room, a woman who looked to be in her early sixties carrying a clipboard, Caucasian, she noticed the man on the floor as I felt a sharp poke in my side as I lay in the cramped space.

She bent down to check his pulse while I reached for whatever was stabbing me, my hands felt cold metal, and smooth wood, I slowly, carefully turned my head around and saw what it was that had stabbed me, the front sight of an old bolt action rifle, whoever owned the house must have hidden it there.

I could faintly hear her whispering to the man on the floor, he started to stir. '_It's now or never…'_ I grabbed the front of the rifle and rolled out of the cubby hole and dragged it along with me, the woman turned to face me as I got to my knee and swung the rifle up against my shoulder, I snapped the bolt handle up and pulled it back slightly, saw that it had a round in the chamber, and slapped it shut again.

"Don't move, don't say a word…" I whispered out to the woman as I pointed the weapon at her head, which is when I recognized what I was holding, a Russian M44 Mosin Nagant Carbine, it had to either be a war capture or… given the climate of the second impact world, the farmer may have been a soldier in a post-impact war… I blinked my eyes, stopping my mind from wandering, I pushed myself to my feet and noticed that the sling on the rifle was lined with pouches, likely ammo and the rifle's cleaning kit…

I shook my head again, I couldn't concentrate, what had they drugged me on? I bit down on my lip and everything snapped back into reality, the woman was reaching for something…

I pulled the trigger, the gun bucked and my ears popped from the shockwave of firing inside of such a small room, the woman hit the ground clutching her arm, started running down the hall she came from, cycling the bolt on the rifle as I went, ejecting the spent casing and chambering the next round, the air smelled like old gunpowder and spent primer.

I ran through the thin sliding door leading to the outside, there was a large military helicopter sitting in a clearing ahead of me, several other military vehicles littered the field with various tents and other temporary structures, several people in military fatigues were running towards me, the gun shot had not gone unnoticed.

My vision started to drift again, I bit down on the inside of my cheek and snapped the heavy Russian rifle up to my shoulder, I lined up on one of the soldiers running towards me and fired, the gun jumped wildly in my hands, my small frame not used to the recoil of a full powered rifle, my shot went wide but it caught their attention, they raised their own, fully automatic, rifles towards me, I backpedaled around the house I'd just run out of, cycling the gun as I went, realizing the gun was now empty.

I could hear the running soldiers getting closer, I tore open one of the pouches hanging from the sling and found three loaded stripper clips, the ammo was green lacquer coated, Czech military most likely. I slotted the clip into the guide on the top of the rifle's receiver and shoved the five rounds down into the magazine, the clip shot out as the last round clicked into place and I slammed the bolt closed, ready to fire.

My eyes caught the bayonet on the side of the rifle and I remembered something my grandpa had said about the old Russian bolt actions. _"These guns are kinda tricky about the front sight, back in the war they would always fire them with bayonets fixed, they sighted them in that way, and so if the bayonet isn't in place the shots could go wide"_

I pulled back the spring clip on the bayonet and swung it to the front of the rifle and locked it forward, unsure why I had remembered that at that moment; glad all the same that I'd have a better chance if my shots could connect…

I pressed my back against the side of the house and held the rifle at the ready as the footsteps got closer, the carbine was heavy in my hands, but it was a reassuring weight, let me know that there was something to it…

A helmet poked around the corner and I slapped the trigger, a spark on the helmet and then the owner of it fell to the ground and twitched, I didn't know if I'd killed him or if the shock against his helmet had just knocked him cold, I couldn't make myself care…something was wrong in my head.

I cycled the bolt and ran along the side of the house, the footsteps seemed more hesitant now. I ducked around the corner and ended up on the back side of the house, opposite where I'd exited. A young soldier came around the corner, I pulled the trigger…and heard nothing more than a simple click.

He turned and saw me, I lunged as he raised his weapon, I speared him in the sternum with the bayonet and cycled the bolt, ejecting the dud and chambering a fresh round, I slapped the trigger and the recoil pulled the bayonet back out of him as he fell back onto the ground, blood coming out of his mouth…

I cycled the bolt open again, ejecting the spent shell as I shoved my hand into the pouch and loaded three more cartridges into the open action. I slapped the bolt shut and kept moving away from the house. I could hear gunfire behind me, and I dove to the ground, the shots went high, I could hear them shoot past.

Then I heard an engine and I turned to see an HMMWV pulled up between me and the house, the Ma Deuce on the roof barking out a song of destruction as the rear driver's side door flew open, I heard yelling from inside, "Chief get in this vehicle, now!"

I folded back the bayonet as I instinctively responded to the command; I dove into the back seat and heard the engine rev up a second before we started tear-assing out of the camp. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the reduced light, there were two soldiers in the vehicle, the gunner and the driver, I couldn't tell anything about them from my current position.

"Look, I don't even know _how_ you could be who you say you are, but when our lieutenant tried to stop the guys with the masks from cutting on you they shot him in the head, that's not right, that's not how we do shit in the Corps. Whoever is calling the shots isn't in any chain of command that I am going to respect, so we're getting you and us the fuck out of here." The driver said as he accelerated onto a highway.

I finally heard the browning on the roof quiet down as the gunner dropped down into the back seat, "So you're the girl they were messing with in there huh?" I recognized the voice, Brooklyn, Brooklyn was under water.

"You're Brooklyn." I said aloud, mostly to myself as I remembered being captured, the order to surrender from outside of the plug…

"Eh, no, I'm Calvino, that's Kharms up front driving. And you're… Well… our orders called you Ayanami, but you called yourself Saito, and there was a medic attached to Lima called Saito, but there's no way in hell… " he trailed off, sitting back against the seat as I set the safety on the rifle I'd taken.

"You'd be surprised" I commented, my head clearing a little as we bounced down the highway. "it helps if you just go along with it. You should tell Kharms to head for Tokyo 3, broadcast on the NERV channels that you have the first child… they'll probably arrest you, but given the circumstances I think that's the best course of action, I'll try to get them to let you go, and if not… I know people." I rambled, my head clouding up again… they had either drugged me on something or done something to my brain, I hopped the prior but still feared the latter.

"I heard it, and Cal, get back on the fifty, looks like they're coming after us with the helo." I heard from up front right before I heard the dull thump of helicopter rotors. Kharms pushed the pedal harder and the truck lurched forward in acceleration.

My mind drifted to the past, memories of something very similar. I heard the rapid fire of a mounted machinegun in the distance and a series of pings off the armor of the humvee, must have been up-armored or we'd have been turned into paste right then.

I heard our own browning open up as Calvino loosed a stream of automatic fire at the helicopter but the gunfire ended almost as soon as it started, "I'm out!" he yelled as he dropped back inside the truck. I kept trying to remember…

"Where are we?" I yelled suddenly to Kharms, "Are we anywhere near Tokyo-3? I need a radio, a cell phone, something!" A plan was forming in my mind as I shoved my rifle and ammo pouches at Calvino, "It's not a Barret, but it'll punch through a quarter inch steel plate at three hundred yards, I used to have one of my own." I explained.

He took the offered rifle and said "eh, what the fuck, right?" as he kicked the passenger side rear door open and leaned out, holding the rifle in a left handed grip as he fired at the helicopter, the two foot flash out of the end of the barrel surprising him, but he cycled to his second shot without hesitation.

I dove into the front seat and reached for the radio Kharms was handing to me, I looked at it, standard issue, exactly what I needed. For some reason there was only one frequency I could remember, the one Shimata and I had used in Afghanistan…

I cranked the tuning dial and turned the radio on, "This is… this is Saito, Shimata, I don't know if you're listening, I feel like an idiot for even trying, but for fuck's sakes if you're out there I'm in the shit real bad-" the radio chirped as a signal came in over mine.

"_Kas? I guess Jun was right, Ayanami is you, no other reason you'd use this frequency, what's going on?" _ I heard the bewildered voice on the other end ask.

I keyed up the mic as Calvino fired another shot, "Bucket? Alright, before you ask, yes, that's gunfire. You remember Afghanistan, the first time, right after Shimata got taken out? In the back of the truck, the Hind? It's a lot like that, I'm at…" I looked around trying to find some land mark, some way of identifying my location, I spotted one, "NERV stationary emplacement Hakone-alpha-tango-seven –seven-niner, heading north, I need any support you can give me, over."

Kharms gave me a strange look, he must have been wondering what I was drugged on to try to radio for somebody I knew was dead, if only he knew…

The radio crackled again, _"I don't have those kinds of resources available right now, I don't know what to tell you Kas…" _he replied, mournfully.

I slammed my head against the seat back and keyed up the mic again, "Ah, damnit…" an idea popped into my mind; "do you know any NERV-monitored frequencies?"

He must have picked up on my plan as he came back instantly, and more excited,_ "one-five-six-dot-zero-five, we never use it because they are always on it, over!"_

I cranked the dial on the radio and keyed up again "This is Pilot Ayanami Rei of NERV, I am being pursued by hostile forces, please respond. I repeat, this is Pilot Ayanami Rei of NERV, is anybody listening?"

There was a brief hiss and then somebody finally replied, "_This is channel is for NERV use only, immature pranks will not be tolerated."_

I recognized the voice, Katsuragi, I was sure of it, "Katsuragi, I can assure you that I am legitimate, if you'll remember in the battle before last, I protected your car from Unit T-"

"_I believe you, do not disclose anymore operational information on insecure frequencies, that said, where the hell are you?"_ she interrupted.

"Long story, I'm in a US Marine Corps Humvee being pursued by a rogue Marine Corps Blackhawk, heading north past Hakone Junction Seven Niner Niner, towards Tokyo-3, accompanied by Two Marines, Calvino and Kharms, They rescued me." I added, hoping to protect them from any ill treatment…

"_I'm sending you support now, they should be there in a few minutes…"_ her voice changed, like she was yelling away from the microphone, "_No, abort the test, abort the te-" _the transmission cut off and static poured from the handset, I saw a flash of light on the horizon, the kind of light when an AT field is used in combat, my blood ran cold.

"Fuck!"

* * *

We'll be pushing more towards Eva after this, was setting up for future conflict.


	11. In Return

A little shorter than most, it just didn't want to be any longer. R&R

* * *

"Fuck!" I yelled as the bright light hurt my eyes. The cross flare reached high into the sky as static poured from the handset. The truck swerved, the helicopter behind us pulled for altitude as the blast wave came in, no pilot wanted to be caught low altitude in that kind of turbulence.

Calvino pulled himself back inside of the HMMWV and passed my rifle back up to me, "went through about nine rounds, couldn't put one through the cockpit." He explained as he hauled the door shut.

Kharms had sweat running down his face as he fought with the wheel against the rushing winds, I saw the Blackhawk out of the side window, the pilot had the craft angled against the shockwave, using the winds to gain altitude as they pulled away from us.

"Somebody knows what he's doing" I commented dryly as we pulled into a more densely urban area, the outskirts of Tokyo-3 didn't have the tall buildings of the city center, but they weren't small either.

"Yeah, Anatoly's the best behind the wheel I've ever seen." Calvino remarked, not realizing I wasn't talking about Kharms, but I didn't bother correcting him.

"Shame Bucket isn't here; he put a fifty through the canopy of a Hind in Afghanistan, the first time around anyway…" I offered up to Calvino as the helicopter arced back around towards us.

"If we had any ammo for the fifty…" he started before stopping, his point obvious.

There was another bright flash, another cross flare, closer than the first. The HMMWV lurched, the Blackhawk pulled away again. The Anti-Angel Intercept buildings started to shift into their combat orientation as we pulled towards the center of the city.

I snapped open the four pouches on the Mosin's sling and looked inside, the first two had four stripper clips each, I did the math in my head in a second and figured that came out to forty rounds. The third pouch had a handful of loose ammo, the fourth had two stripper clips and a canvas pouch with what I would assume was the weapon's cleaning kit.

"Fifty and change plus what's in the rifle." I said as I closed the pouches back up, "Not that it'll be much use against an Angel…" I added as another flash lit up the sky in the distance. The ground started to shake and Kharms hit the brakes.

A split second passed as the ground shook, the road in front of us split and Evangelion launch rails shot out of the ground; the purple titan Evangelion Unit-01 rose from the depths of Nerv.

Another flash, the top of a hill disappeared, a black monstrosity sauntered over the top and I knew what it was, it was too soon, far, far too soon... I kicked the door of the HMMWV open and ran towards the surface access door that I knew was there, even though I wasn't sure how I knew.

I heard footsteps behind me, Kharms and Calvino must have followed me. I reached the door and tried the handle, to no avail. It was locked and I didn't have my ID badge; I did have a rifle. I folded back the bayonet on the rifle and pressed the muzzle of the rifle to the door and pulled the trigger.

Red hot sparks showered the ground as the steel penetrator shattered the locking bolt, a swift nudge later the door swung open. I ran inside and down the staircase, the two marines close behind me as I descended into the geofront.

"Hey kid! Slow the fuck down!" I heard Kharms yell from behind me, I hesitated for a moment as the footsteps drew closer, I cycled out the spend cartridge and pressed in a fresh one from the pouch as they closed on me.

"I can't leave him out there alone, this… this is the fight that breaks his spirit, and I won't let him do it alone… not this time!" I yelled back as I kicked an access door and ran out into a corridor. There was a linear express line that would take me to the cages, if I could get there…

A big hand grabbed my shoulder as I pushed into the hallway, I turned around to see Calvino's incredulous face, "What are you talking about, you're gonna go out there… and fight, after what you just went through? You're just a kid!"

"_Semper Fidelis_, I would think you're familiar with the motto, I'll stand by him, to the end. I won't leave him out in the suck alone… it'll kill his soul." I said, knowing more than Calvino could have known, more than I should have known. Even if everything had been different, something deep within me told me that this fight would play out exactly the same as I remembered… unless I could change it.

"We'll get you where you need to go." Kharms interjected as I heard the distant echo of a door being slammed open, somebody came in after us.

"Then let's run for it, there's a rail line just up the hallway." I offered as I took off down the hall towards the carriage, hoping I could get to the cages in time, the footsteps echoed behind me. Maybe, just maybe, I could make it different this time.

"Kharms, I'm putting a claymore here, you get the other side. They come through here; they'll enter the involuntary leg confiscation program." Calvino said behind me as I stepped onto the tram, a few moments later the two followed me in, and the door closed, sending the tram on its way.

"There's no way we won't meet resistance between here and the cage, they're not going to want me anywhere near an Evangelion after I've been a prisoner, not without checking me over, but there's no time, so damn the consequences." I said as the linear carriage sped towards Unit-00.

"Sounds a lot like we're going to get shot" Calvino deadpanned as he leaned against the side of the tram, checking his rifle over.

"It _does_ sound a lot like we're going to get shot" Kharms agreed from his seat across from me, "But, we knew that coming into this. Hell, I thought it was the end of the god damned world fifteen years ago, this is just borrowed time anyway, right?"

"Smart thing is to run away, but I couldn't live with myself if I did. You don't have to come with me, and I won't think any less of you if you leave." I said softly as I checked over my own rifle for what must have been the fiftieth time, locked and loaded, ready to fire.

"We're long past turning back; we'll just have to figure it out as we go." Calvino stated matter-of-factly, "Besides, I'm not about to let you go in there by yourself, not after what you've been through."

I got to my feet as the tram slowed, the cages would be only a few dozen meters from the doors, but there would almost certainly be resistance between the tram and Zero, section two, armed most likely.

"Well, here's to hoping they don't have shoot on sight orders" I joked as the doors slid open, I folded back the bayonet on the rifle, at this range I wouldn't need the stability anyway.

I jumped into the corridor, rifle shouldered, Zero was just behind the door ahead of me. Five men, weapons drawn between me and my engine of destruction, they seemed surprised to see me.

"Let me pass." I stated directly, rifle pointed directly at the center agent's chest.

"We can't let you do that, Ayanami. We have orders to take you into custody." The agent at the end of my rifle said, he face completely calm despite the weapon pointed at him.

"_We really think you should let her through_" I heard from behind me, a glance out of the corner of my eye let me see the two marines who'd been helping me along, were flanking me, backing me up.

"Let me through, I've still got a chance to make this right… I can help him!" I yelled suddenly, pleadingly to the agents blocking the path.

The door behind them opened, he was there, Commander Ikari, in the flesh. His face blank, like always. "Rei" He stated, one word, one single syllable, and yet…

"Commander, I… I can stop this, send me out, I'll help Ikari, he doesn't have to face this alone, he can't do this alone… and you know what you'll have to do, and it'll break him… Just let me stop that, don't force his hand…" I pleaded, my aim shaking as my finger felt slick on the cool steel trigger, I was starting to panic, it wasn't… it wasn't right, "You promised her you would take care of him, keep that promise."

His façade cracked, for a moment, I could see the conflict, I caught him off guard, and yet… there was something else, something I didn't want to see, "It's too late for that, it's already done, the battle is won."

My eyes went wide, I'd changed nothing, I'd been too slow, from the moment I entered that tram I'd never had a chance to turn the tide of the battle, never had the chance to save him from what he'd be forced to do… all of this, coming back from the dead, being put _here_ into this world, this _nightmare_, and nothing I could do would make a difference…

So I pulled the trigger.


End file.
